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Known since Darwin's time, the Plio-Pleistocene succession exposed at the Chapadmalal sea cliffs have provided abundant mammal remains even though palaeobiological studies are scarce. Different authors have identified several assemblages in this stratigraphic interval of homogeneous lithology, which records an important mid-Pliocene faunal turnover dated at ca. 3.3 Ma. This paper examines the palaeoecological characteristics and the regional importance of this faunal turnover: 37% of all genera and 53% of all species became extinct between the older Chapadmalalan and the younger Barrancalobian chronostratigraphic units, a level that is actually higher than the percentage of genera extinct at the global-scaled Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction. The palaeoecological analysis permits to infer that the species-rich Chapadmalalan fauna seems to have been very balanced from the trophic–energetic point of …