New tragulid remains from the early/middle Miocene and a revision of their occurrence in Greece

ABSTRACT

Tragulidae are very rare in the Miocene fossil record of Greece and their known material is quite scarce. Some new remains of them, found in the early/middle Miocene locality Antonios in Chalkidiki Peninsula (Macedonia, Greece), are studied in this article. Based on the size, at least three different tragulids have been recognised, Dorcatherium guntianum von Meyer 1846, Dorcatherium cf. crassum, and Dorcabune cf. anthracotherioides . An isolated small to medium size upper canine is morphologically similar to those of Dorcatherium and referred as Dorcatherium sp. Besides Antonios, Tragulidae were also found in other seven Greek fossiliferous sites but the material is scarce, in some cases represented by a single specimen. The determination of this material is problematic, names are proposed but they are doubted. The presence of Dorcatherium is continuous in Greece from the early Miocene (Antonios locality, MN 4/5) to the end of Miocene (Dytiko localities, MN 13). The possible presence of Dorcabune anthracotherioides in Antonios fauna may represent the first occurrence of this species in Europe and may extend the stratigraphic range of the species to MN 5, as its current older reference in Siwaliks (Pakistan) corresponds to MN 6.

KEYWORDS:

• Tragulids
• dental morphometry
• systematics
• biochronology
• palaeoecology

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to S. Sen (MNHNP) for his help and hospitality during my visit to the museum and for the casts of D. puyhauberti. I am grateful to Gertrud Rössner (SNSB-BSPGM) for her help during my visit to the museum and her useful comments on an early draft of the manuscript. Thanks, are also due to Jan van der Made (Spanish National Research Council, Madrid) and Socrates Roussiakis (University of Athens) for their information about Kerassia dorcathere. I also thank D. S. Kostopoulos (LGPUT) for giving me the measurements from the original material of D. puyhauberti from Vathylakkos 3. The useful comments of the reviewers Bastien Mennecart and Oleksandr Kovalchuk improved remarkably the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.