A vacant niche? The curious distributions of African Perissodactyla

Abstract

Why are there no perissodactyls in sub-Saharan West Africa? There are no records of hipparions or zebras in that region and records of rhinoceroses are peripheral and sparse. Absence of records is not information of absence. More than a century of palaeontological and archaeozoological research has yielded thousands of skeletal specimens of late Tertiary or Quaternary mammals throughout most of Africa with equid and rhinocerotid specimens well represented from North, East and South Africa, but not saharan, sahelian or soudanian West Africa. This paper explores the evidence of this absence but offers no solution.

Keywords:

• West Africa
• Saharan
• sahelian
• soudanian
• perissodactyls
• African distribution
• Chalicotheriidae
• Rhinocerotidae
• Hipparioninae
• Equinae
• rhinoceroses
• hipparions
• zebras
• asses
• Quaternary
• Pleistocene
• Holocene
• palaeontology

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge discussions with many people on the topic of the natural absence of equids and the paucity of rhinocerotids in sub-Saharan West Africa. Dr Ernest L. Lundelius, Jr, of the Department of Geology, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA encouraged me to report on this singular situation. Dr Colin Groves, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2600, Australia, Dr Graham Avery of IZIKI, The South African Museum. P. O. Box 61, Cape Town, Cape Province, 6000 South Africa and Dr Lee Berger of the Origins Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2001, South Africa are thanked for their insightful comments and challenging questions. I owe sincere appreciation to the late Donovan R. Rosevear, past Inspector-General of Forests for the Nigerian Government, for his comprehensive Checklist and Atlas of Nigerian Mammals (1953) on which I relied for critical ecological and faunal information on Nigeria and the sub-Saharan West African sahel, soudan and orchard bushveld from Cape Verde to Lake Chad. William Leather of Eternal Flow Computers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, helped in constructing the figures and formatting the text. I thank you all.