The Palaeontology of Browsing and Grazing

Abstract

Large herbivorous mammals have a long history of adaptation to changing environmental circumstances. Many groups of mammalian herbivores started as omnivores and opportunistic browsers of fruits and other plant parts, later adapting to increasingly specialised leaf browsing, and finally to grazing as open grass-dominated environments spread following climatic cooling and drying during the Neogene. Changes in global climate led to vegetational changes in terrestrial ecosystems, which resulted in changes in the proportions of browsing and grazing species in the ungulate guilds. There is currently a range of proxy methods to assess diets and feeding ecology of large extinct herbivorous mammals, including dental microwear and mesowear analyses and stable isotope analyses. Together these methods have enabled an increasingly diverse and fine-scale understanding of the dietary variation of herbivorous mammals throughout the Cenozoic, providing a more detailed picture than traditional comparative ecomorphology approaches alone. This chapter will provide an up-to-date assessment of the analytical methods of determining the diet of extinct large herbivorous mammal taxa, and provide insights into changes in the assemblages of browsing and grazing mammals and how these relate to changes to climate and the evolution of different plant forms.