Gazelles (Mammalia: Bovidae) from the early Pleistocene Tianzhen area, Shanxi Province, China

ABSTRACT

Fossil gazelles have been discovered from the late Miocene to the late Pleistocene in China, but the Neogene gazelles were much more documented. The gazelle specimens unearthed from the early Pleistocene at Tianzhen are described and classified into three species: Gazella sinensis, G. blacki and Procapra cf. przewalskii. Based on the observation of extant Gazella subgutturosa and Procapra, we summarised the differential morphological characters of these species. Meanwhile, we reviewed and revised two diagnostic characters, morphology of p4 and size of horn cores, and we suggest that these should be used carefully in classification. Based on the new diagnostic characters, the Gazella cf. subgutturosa identified by Teilhard de Chardin and Piveteau in 1930 should be reassigned to G. sinensis. Partial materials of G. paragutturosa described by Bohlin in 1938 may be moved from Gazella to Procapra as P. gutturosa. We infer that the lectotype of G. blacki and other materials described by Chen in 1997 belong to the juvenile individuals based on the internal morphology of their horn cores. The different characters of the early Pleistocene G. sinensis and G. blacki are summarised after reviewing all materials classified into these two species in the previous works.

KEYWORDS:

• Gazella
• Procapra
• early Pleistocene
• morphology
• taxonomy
• Tianzhen

Acknowledgments

The authors are deeply thankful to Professor Qi Wei for providing the gazelle specimens from Tianzhen for the present study. They would also like to acknowledge Jin Chen, Hongwei Si, Dongsheng Li from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Xichao Zhu from the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences for their providing specimens for comparison. The authors thank Yemao Hou from IVPP for CT scanning. The authors thank Shiqi Wang, IVPP and Yikun Li, SNU for discussions. The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript. This work was supported by the Science Foundation of Hebei Normal University (No. L2023B54) and Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDB 26030304, No. XDA 20070203).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2023.2222131.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the [Science Foundation of Hebei Normal University] under Grant [No. L2023B54] and [Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences] under Grant [No. XDB 26030304, No. XDA 20070203].