Fossil endocasts of two Pleistocene bovines (Bovidae, Mammalia) from the Upper Siwaliks of northern India

ABSTRACT

Natural fossil endocasts are a direct source of information on palaeoneurology of extinct species and, in recent years, there has been a dramatic revival of interest in palaeoneurological investigations. Endocasts of bovines (family Bovidae), however, remain hitherto undescribed. Here we describe two well preserved natural endocasts of Pleistocene bovines from the Upper Siwalik deposits exposed near Panchkula (Haryana), in the vicinity of Chandigarh city, northern India. The two endocasts, referred here to cf. Bubalus platyceros and Bovini indet., are similar in gross morphology but differ significantly in several respects. Comparison with modern bovines reveals important similarities between the Siwalik endocasts and the brains of Bos taurus and Bubalus bubalis, especially in size of their cerebral hemispheres and placement of fissures. However, the Siwalik endocasts differ significantly in being less replete with gyri and sulci, suggesting that bovines have undergone an increase in complexity of their neuroanatomy during the later part of the Pleistocene. This study also supports the recently proposed hypothesis that mammalian taxa with relatively large brain size were more likely to survive the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions.

KEYWORDS:

• Endocasts
• bovines
• Siwaliks
• India
• Pleistocene

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Debajit Datta for his constructive suggestions in this study. Authors also thank IITR for providing the necessary infrastructural facilities to conduct this study. Sunil Bajpai acknowledges funding under Institute Chair Professorship of the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IITR).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This manuscript is based on fossil materials collected during field investigations carried out by one of us (SB). No major financial expenditure was incurred during this field visit. Aatreyee Saha acknowledges financial support under the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship (PM-31-22-622-414; Ministry of Education, IndiaMinistry of Education, India [PM-31-22-622-414];Institute Chair Professorship, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee;