0000000000704342
AUTHOR
H. Tobien
Patterns of Old World Hipparionine Evolutionary Diversification and Biogeographic Extension
Hipparionine horses have long been united evolutionarily by the presence of three toes per digit, having high crowned cheek teeth with cement, and isolated proto-cones on upper cheek teeth (Christol, 1832). Geochronologically they have further been recognized as the preeminent large mammal “index” fossils for late Neogene Old World deposits. Their abundance in later Neogene mammal faunas has prompted the production of a staggering body of systematic and interpretive literature during the last 150 years. In the last 40 years there has been an increasing number of attempts to reorganize parts of Old World hipparionine systematics by regional studies of variable scope including Europe in gener…
New Miocene locality in Turkey with evidence on the origin of Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus.
Collections in early Middle Miocene deposits at Pasalar in Turkey have yielded a very rich fauna. Included in this are two hominoid species referred here to Sivapithecus darwini (Abel) 1902 and Ramapithecus wickeri (Leakey) 1962. These are both more primitive morphologically and earlier in time than other species of these genera, and they provide evidence that Sivapithecus and Ramapithecus are closely related and that their early diversification may have occurred not in Africa but in Eurasia.