Skull morphology of bottlenose dolphins from different ocean populations with emphasis on South America.

The bottlenose dolphin, genus Tursiops, is cosmopolitan occurring in tropical and temperate regions, with morphological variation between and within different oceans. Since the genus' taxonomy has been under discussion for a long time, this work aimed at analyzing the cranial variability of T. truncatus from different regions of the world.

Variation in the skull morphometry of four taxonomic units of Thrichomys (Rodentia: Echimyidae), from different Neotropical biomes.

The echimyid rodents of the genus Thrichomys vary considerably in their behavior and feeding ecology, reflecting their occurrence in environments as different as the Caatinga, Cerrado, Pantanal, and Chaco biomes. While the genus was originally classified as monospecific, a number of Thrichomys species have been recognized in recent decades, based on morphometric, cytogenetic, and molecular analyses. While Thrichomys is well studied, the variation found in its cranial morphology is poorly understood, given the taxonomic and ecological complexities of the genus.

Skull variation in a shovel-headed amphisbaenian genus, inferred from the geometric morphometric analysis of five South American Leposternon species.

Amphisabenia is a group of squamates adapted for a fossorial lifestyle. The skull is the animal's the main digging tool, and can present one of four principal shapes. The shovel-headed shape is considered to be the most specialized for digging.