Iberian micromammals show local extent of Vallesian Crisis

Do species factories exist? Detecting exceptional patterns of evolution in the mammalian fossil record

“…The known Vallesian pattern is seen in MN9 western Europe, but this appears to be a local, rather than a continent-wide event, which is in line with recent research [ 52 ]. Eastern Europe, however, does exhibit another extinction hotspot in MN9 ( figure 3 ).…”

Listriodon dukkar sp. nov. (Suidae, Artiodactyla, Mammalia) from the late Miocene of Pasuda (Gujarat, India): the decline and extinction of the Listriodontinae

“…It has also been correlated to Mi7, an oxygen isotope event around 9.7 Ma, reflecting decreased global temperatures (Agustí et al 2013). The Vallesian Crisis has been considered to be continent-wide (e.g., Fortelius et al 1996a) or only local (e.g., Madern et al 2018). Hominoidea went extinct in western and central Europe, but are known from younger localities in Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia (Koufos and De Bonis 2006;Spassov et al 2012;Kaya et al 2016;Agusti et al 2020), which has its parallel in longer survival of palaeotropical plants in SE Europe and the Caucasus (Kovar-Eder et al 1996).…”

Suidae (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) from the late Miocene hominoid locality of Alsótelekes (Hungary)

“…palaeochoerus, Pa. steinheimensis, and Pa. crusafonti, while only two suids are present in Alsótelekes and Rudabánya. During the late Miocene, regional differences in climate are documented (Jiménez-Moreno et al, 2010), which were conceivably responsible for promoting differential responses of mammalian faunas even at a short geographical scale, as recorded between inland and coastland areas of the Iberian Peninsula (Madern et al, 2018). A study focused on a well-constrained geographical region in southern Italy during the Late Pleistocene revealed pronounced fluctuations in size in the extant wild boar, Sus scrofa, between glacial and interglacial stages, accounting for more than 20% variation in m3 L (Iannucci et al, 2020b).…”

“…This event, around 9.7 Ma, was associated with increased seasonality and lower precipitations and humidity which led to the spread of deciduous woodlands and faunas adapted to more open environments (Fortelius et al, 1996b;Van Dam, 2006;Domingo et al, 2013), although the Vallesian Crisis likely did not occur so abruptly as often portrayed and affected different regions heterogeneously (Agustí and Moyà-Solà, 1990;Fortelius et al, 1996b;Casanovas-Vilar et al, 2014;Daxner-Höck et al, 2016;Madern et al, 2018;Butiseaca ˘et al, 2021). The sharpness of the turnover event may have been exacerbated by the uneven quality of the fossil record between different areas of Europe, by the overidentification of fragmentary remains based on contextual data, and/or by the biochronological attributions of localities that lack independent age constraints (Casanovas-Vilar et al, 2014;Madern et al, 2018), caveats especially relevant considering the case of the Dinotheriensande, one of the most important early Vallesian (MN 9) localities that also contains reworked sediments and fauna (Böhme et al, 2012). Abrupt or gradual, there was nonetheless an evident turnover of mammalian faunas during the late Miocene, which preferentially affected forest-adapted taxa, including suids and hominoids (Agustí and Moyà-Solà, 1990;Fortelius et al, 1996aFortelius et al, , 1996bBegun et al, 2012).…”