Miocene chevrotains (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Tragulidae) from Pakistan

ABSTRACT

The Miocene tragulid species from Siwalik sediments in Asia have been repeatedly studied since Lydekker erected them in 1876. Here, we describe and interpret new dental material of Tragulidae collected in the Potwar Plateau (northern Pakistan). The material belongs to four of the seven species previously known from the Siwaliks: Dorcatherium nagrii, Dt. minus, Dt. majus, and Dorcabune anthracotheroides. In addition, we identified Dt. naui and Dt. guntianum, previously exclusively recorded from Europe, and established Dorcatherium dehmi n. sp. Our morphometric analysis went beyond the traditional method of identifying tragulid species basically by size, and included tooth crown height as well as related morphological features. Hence, we were able to differentiate between species that before were considered conspecific, because of overlapping size. With this we set standards for future studies on fossil tragulids, which, apart from size, have to take into account morphological features, especially of premolars, deciduous cheek teeth, and postcrania to differentiate among tragulid species, to understand overall relationships of extinct and extant representatives, and to establish coherent systematics of the group.

LSIDurn:lsid:zoobank.org:author:47D5143A-AE8D-4BE6-9CED-1284012DB583

KEYWORDS:

• Dorcatherium
• Dorcabune
• Siwalik Group
• morphometric odontology
• systematics

Acknowledgments

We are most grateful to Richard Dehm (†), Therese zu Oettingen-Spielberg (†), and Helmut Vidal (†) for collecting the fossils, and to the colleagues of the Geological Survey of Pakistan in Quetta, who supported them. We would like to thank Manuela Schellenberger (Munich) for her help with photography, Martin Pickford (Paris) for fruitful discussions, and Martin Pickford and Jan van der Made (Madrid) for their constructive reviews on an earlier draft of the paper. We are as well grateful to Lafayette Eaton (Santiago de Chile), Christine Boucard (Munich) and Martin Pickford (Paris) for proofreading the manuscript. JAGS would like to thank John Barry (Cambridge), Anek R. Sankhyan (Ghumarwin, India) and Simon Pfanzelt (Gatersleben, Germany) for the borrowed literature. Finally, JAGS is grateful to his children Muriel and Simon for their unconditional help and support, and to the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München for providing a work place and access to further facilities. This study has received support from Conicyt-Becas-Chile, Universidad de Concepcion, Chile and DAAD, Germany.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.