A new species of the genus Amphilagus (Lagomorpha, Mammalia) from the Middle Miocene of south-eastern Siberia

Abstract

Amphilagus tomidai n. sp. is a new species of the genus Amphilagus (Lagomorpha, Mammalia) erected on the fossil materials from the deposits of Aya Cave (Middle Miocene, Aya Bay, mid-western coast of Baikal Lake, south-eastern Siberia), previously identified as Amphilagus cf. fontannesi (Erbajeva MA, Filippov AG. 1997. Miocene small mammalian faunas of the Baikalian region. In: Actes du Congrès BiochroM'97. Aguilar J-P, Legendre C, Michaux J, editors. 21. Mémoires et Travaux de L'Institut de Montpellier, E.P.H.E. p. 249–259). Amphilagus tomidai n. sp. is the northernmost Eurasian record of the genus. It differs from the other Asian species of the genus by its larger size and slightly higher crown, by some peculiar advanced features of the upper teeth the evidence of which are: width of teeth became significantly larger with wear stage, hypostria became deeper, flexids on the occlusal surface of teeth covered by deep cement; in P3 both anterior folds filled with cement. The main trend in the evolutionary development of Amphilagus lineage probably is an enlargement of size and crown height, increasing hypsodonty, rather high developing of cement.

Keywords::

• taxonomy
• Amphilagus
• Middle Miocene
• south-eastern Siberia
• Russia

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge our colleagues Daxner-Höck G, Göhlich U, Badamgarav D†, Tedford R†, Harzhauser M, Kalthoff D for professional assistance, for help with comparative materials and informations. They thank reviewers: Y. Kimura and A. Winkler for the valuable critical comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P-10505-GEO, P-15724-N06 and P-23061-N19 and in part by Russian Fund of basic research (RFBR) [grant number 12-04-00081-a].