First Mexican records of Anthracotheriidae (Mammalia: Artiodactyla)

Abstract

Anthracotheres are generalised artiodactyls that have an extensive record in the Cenozoic of Eurasia and Africa. In North America they have been collected in middle Eocene to early Miocene localities from the California Coast, the Great Plains and the Gulf Coast of the United States, with a single record from the early Miocene of Panama. Here we report few specimens from the early Oligocene (Ar1) Iniyoo Local Fauna of north-western Oaxaca, and the earliest Miocene of Simojovel de Allende, in northern Chiapas. This material has diverse features that indicate they belonged to the bothriodontine Arretotherium, such as selenodont cristids associated with the protoconid and hypoconid, the absence of a premetacristid, and the crenulated enamel. They share with Arretotherium acridens and Arretotherium meridionale the absence of a mesiolingual metacristid, but their general morphology and size indicate a close relationship to Ar. meridionale. Nevertheless, in absence of better-preserved specimens, we decided not to assign the fossil material to this species. Specimens from Oaxaca and Chiapas are the first records of anthracotheres in Mexico. These new records link the previous ones from temperate North America and tropical Central America and indicate that Anthracotheriidae had a very wide geographical distribution in North America during the Palaeogene and the Neogene. Additionally, they represent the southern-most records of Arretotherium in North America during the Oligocene and the early Miocene.

3rd Palaeontological Virtual Congress: palaeontology in the virtual era

“…(2023) propose a new colour pattern for the reconstruction of basal cervids; García-Vázquez et al . (2023) review the peptide mass fingerprinting markers in the cave bear Ursus spelaeus ; Ivantsov & Zakrevskaya (2023) describe the body plan of Dickinsonia from materials collected in the south-eastern White Sea; Jiménez-Hidalgo & Carbot-Chanona (2023) report the first Mexican remains of a Anthracotheriidae from the zones of Santiago Yolomécatl and Simojovel de Allende; Kirichenko-Babko & Perkovsky (2023) report the first neotropical carabid beetle from Eocene amber of Ukraine; Mateos-Carralafuente et al . (2023) evaluate the shell spiral and microstructure of tertiary layers in gigantoproductids (Brachiopoda) as taxonomic characters; Luci et al .…”