New early late Miocene species of Vishnuonyx (Carnivora, Lutrinae) from the hominid locality of Hammerschmiede, Bavaria, Germany

ABSTRACT

This study presents a new species of a large-sized lutrine from the upper Miocene hominid locality of Hammerschmiede, Vishnuonyx neptuni sp. nov., reporting the first occurrence of the genus in Europe and its most northern and western record. The new species differs from the already known members of the genus in size (intermediate between the African Vishnuonyx? angololensis and the Asiatic Vishnuonyx chinjiensis) and morphology, in particular in the larger P4 hypocone, the primitive morphology of M1 (paraconule present, enlarged protoconule and metaconule, labial expansion at the paracone area), the shorter and more robust lower premolars and the wider m1 trigonid. We hypothesized that the dispersal event that led to the expansion of the genus in Europe seems to be correlated with the water connection between Paratethys and the Mesopotamian Basin during the Konkian, between 13.4 and 12.65 Ma. In terms of paleoecology, it is here suggested that this form was feeding mainly on fish and less on bivalves or plant material, resembling the extant giant otter, Pteronura brasiliensis.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors want to thank I. Werneburg (GPIT) for providing access to the material under his curation. We furthermore are grateful to numerous volunteers and participants for their help during the excavations at Hammerschmiede. We would like to thank the editorial personnel of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (T. Martin, A. López-Arbarello and J. Harris), as well as the two reviewers (N. Czaplewski and one anonymous reviewer) for their support and their fruitful comments that improved our manuscript significantly. We acknowledge the support of the Centre of Visualisation, Digitisation and Replication at the Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen for instrument use, scientific and technical assistance and G. Ferreira and A. Tröscher (University of Tübingen) for µCT-scanning the samples. The second author (A.V.) would like to thank the Government of Aragon (Group ref. E33_20R), the Spanish Research Project PGC2018-094122-B-100 (AEI/ FEDER, UE), and the “Juan de la Cierva Formación” program (FJC2018-036669-I to A.V.) from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities for funding.