Unraveling the diversity of early felines: a new genus of Felinae (Carnivora, Felidae) from the Middle Miocene of Madrid (Spain)

ABSTRACT

We describe a hemimandible of a medium-sized feline from the Middle Miocene (middle Aragonian, MN 5, local biozone Dc, around 15.5 Ma) site of Príncipe Pío-2, a recently discovered fossil locality placed in the urban limits of Madrid city (Spain), within an area previously known for its rich paleontological findings. The specimen is very well preserved, showing the complete hemimandible, as well as all the teeth except the incisors. Some characters, such as the missing talonid in m1, the high p3, the large mesial cuspid in p4, and the presence of a vestigial m2, prevent its adscription to other known feline taxa such as Styriofelis turnauensis or Miopanthera lorteti, previously recorded in the Middle Miocene faunas from Europe, but absent in the central basins of Spain. The hemimandible has robust mandibular corpus and ramus compared with these latter and to extant felines of similar size, and exhibits a relatively stronger ridged masseteric line, which points towards the existence of a proportionally larger and more powerful m. masseter that generated a strong bite when hunting. These characters suggest that the Príncipe Pío-2 feline could have preyed upon relatively larger prey than those of extant, similarly sized felines. We propose the new genus and species Magerifelis peignei for the studied specimen, a species that would also include the material from the French Middle Miocene localities of Bézian and Artenay.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study is part of the research projects EVOFEL (reference PID2020-112642GB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033), and PID2020-116220GB-I00. MJS is a member of the Research Groups CSIC 641538 (Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, Madrid, Spain) and FOCONTUR (Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis). JM is a member of the Research Groups CSIC 641538 and CAM-UCM 910607. We thank A. L. Garvía (Curator, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC) and J. F. Pastor (Universidad de Valladolid) for kindly loaning the specimens used for comparison. We thank L. Cavin (Curator, Muséum d'histoire naturelle de Geneve, MHNG) for providing images of the cast of the holotype of Styriofelis turnauensis. For the reconstruction of Magerifelis peignei, JG used the 3D model of the skull umzc:vertebrates:k.6182 Felis catus, from MorphoSource (media identifier ark:/87602/m4/420571). P. L. Godoy (Phylogenetics Editor of JVP), J. Meachen (Associate Editor of JVP), and two anonymous reviewers made constructive suggestions for improvement of the manuscript.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

MJS designed the project and analyzed the data; JG, GS, MA, and JM gathered and analyzed the data; GS processed the images from the CT Scan; JG performed the reconstruction of the life appearance of Magerifelis peignei. All authors drafted and edited the manuscript.

SUPPLEMENTARY FILES

Supplementary File 1.nex: data matrix in Nexus file.

Supplementary File 2.tnt: data matrix in TNT file.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

CT Data available at Morphosource via this link: ark:/87602/m4/604442.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.