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The
American Museum of
Natural History has great fossil collections for pretty much every
vertebrate group, so it's no surprise that their South American
collections
are also outstanding. Much of the material was collected by
George Gaylord Simpson, one of the most influential experts on South
American paleomammalogy. Highlights include extensive
collections
of Casamayoran, Mustersan,
Deseadan,
and Colhuehuapian fossil mammals from Patagonia.
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The
Field Museum has
excellent collections of fossil mammals from South America, primarily
due to
the efforts of Elmer Riggs during three expeditions in the 1920's.
The collections span much of the South American Cenozoic
including the Casamayoran, Mustersan, Deseadan, Colhuehuapian,
Santacrucian, Laventan, Chasicoan, and Lujanian South
American Land Mammal "Ages" (SALMAs).
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The
collections at the
Florida Museum of Natural History are strong in two primary areas.
First, the extensive late Cenozoic collections from the state
include many South American taxa that emigrated northward during the
Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI). Second, thanks to
the
museum's active field program in Bolivia, the collections include many
specimens from the rich Deseadan
Salla Beds and various Neogene localities
in Bolivia.
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The
Museo Argentino de
Ciencias Naturales in Buenos Aires is the home of the collections of
the
famous South American paleontologist, Florentino Ameghino. As
such,
it includes many important type specimens and collections from
virtually
every Cenozoic time period represented in South America.
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The
Museo de La Plata in
La Plata, Argentina has one of the most important collections of South
American fossil mammals in the world. The museum has been a center
of South American paleontological research for many years and continues
the tradition today; the faculty include experts in nearly every aspect
of South American paleomammalogy, and fieldwork is ongoing in many
parts of the continent.
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Yale's
Peabody Museum got
a real boost when it acquired Princeton's paleontology collections, the
most extensive and well-studied collection of Santacrucian
(late Miocene) fossil
mammals from Patagonia. The paleontological specimens were
collected along with zoological and botanical specimens in an
exhaustive survey of Patagonia sponsored by the university
from
1896-1899. They were described and illustrated in an
exquisite
set
of volumes, The Reports of the Princeton University Expedition
to Patagonia.
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