Zazamys veronicae (MacPhee and Iturralde-Vinent, 1995)

R D E Macphee, M A Iturralde-Vinent & Eugene S Gaffney, 2003, Domo de Zaza, an Early Miocene Vertebrate Locality in South-Central Cuba, with Notes on the Tectonic Evolution of Puerto Rico and the Mona Passage, American Museum Novitates 3394, pp. 1-43 : 18-19

Zazamys veronicae

( Capromyidae , Isolobodontinae)

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: MacPhee and Iturralde­Vinent, 1995b.

MATERIAL: Holotype is a left lower M1 or M2 ( MNHNCu – P 3071 ; fig. 5), found in lag deposit near south end of Domo de Zaza in 1994. Referred material includes a right ( MNHNCu – P 3058 ) and a left lower M1 or M2 ( MNHNCu – P 3072 ), also found in lag.

DISCUSSION: No additional specimens referable to this species have been recovered since 1994.

XENARTHRA

Until the middle Holocene or perhaps somewhat later, megalonychid sloths formed a significant component of the land mammal fauna of the insular Neotropics. All of these ‘‘Antillean sloths’’, as they may be informally called, are now extinct. Although there is no doubt that Antillean sloths are proximally related to both the extant two­toed sloth Choloepus (Webb, 1985; White, 1993; White and MacPhee, 2001) and the Neogene megalonychids of Argentina (Kraglievich, 1923; Scillato­Yane´, 1979; Pascual et al., 1985), the history of this family in northern South America and the Caribbean region is exceedingly obscure.

Phyllophagans first arrived on land masses related to the Greater Antilles at least as early as 32 Ma, possibly by crossing the GAARlandia landspan (MacPhee and Iturralde­Vinent, 1995b; Iturralde­Vinent and MacPhee, 1999). The earliest empirical evidence for their presence in Cuba comes from Domo de Zaza , which has produced a number of remains attributable to Imagocnus zazae , the first fully diagnosable Tertiary land mammal to be discovered anywhere in the Greater Antilles. In naming this species, MacPhee and Iturralde­Vinent (1994) limited their specimen descriptions to the holotype palate and an isolated molariform. We take this opportunity to amplify the original descriptions and to characterize other sloth remains recovered from this site. These other elements probably belong to the same species (and are therefore placed in its hypodigm), although we are aware that the evident size disparities among specimens hint that a second, even larger Zaza sloth may be represented in this material .