The wide ranging genus Eucyon Tedford & Qiu, 1996 (Mammalia, Carnivora, Canidae, Canini) in the Mio-Pliocene of the Old World
Author
Rook, Lorenzo
Università di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, via G. La Pira, I- 50121 Firenze (Italy) lorenzo. rook @ unifi. it
rook@unifi.it
text
Geodiversitas
2009
31
4
723
741
journal article
10.5281/zenodo.5381420
1638-9395
5381420
Eucyon minor
(
Teilhard de Chardin & Piveteau, 1930
)
Canis chihliensis
var.
minor
Teilhard de Chardin & Piveteau, 1939
; see
Rook 1993
;
Tedford & Qiu 1996
.
TYPE
LOCALITY
. — Nihewan (
China
).
AGE. — Late Pliocene; Haiyan Fm. correlative, early Matuyama.
GEOGRAPHIC RANGE. —
China
,
Mongolia
, Transbaikalia.
This is a relatively late
Eucyon
species
known from the “Villafranchian” (Nihewanian) of
China
(the deposits from Nihewan of
Teilhard de Chardin & Piveteau (1930)
are correlative with the Haiyan Fm. of the Yushe Basin, dated by magnetostratigraphy to the early Matuyama;
Flynn
et al.
1991
; R. H. Tedford pers. comm. in
Rook 1993
). Other specimens of
E.
cf.
minor
from the late Pliocene of Mongolia (
Rook 1993
) are kept within the collections of the Institute of Geology in Moscow (GIN), from three Pliocene sites (MN 16, early Villafranchian;
Pevzner
et al.
1982
;
Vislobokova
et al.
2001
): Shamar, Beregovaja and Udunga (
Fig. 2
).
The specimen from Udunga has been described by
Sotnikova & Kalmykov (1991)
as
Canis
sp.
The samples from Shamar and Beregovaja have been listed by
Kurtén (1974)
as coyote-like dogs. The lower carnassial morphology of the Shamar and Beregovaja specimens have the typical characteristics of the genus
Eucyon
.
Rook (1993)
, on the basis of dental morphology and the similarities with
E. minor
from
China
, attributed this material to
E.
cf.
minor
. More recently,
Sotnikova (2004)
proposed the same taxonomic placement for the larger of the two Shamar mandibles, but suggested an attribution to a new species for the smaller one. An attribution of the Shamar and Beregovaja specimens to
E.
cf.
minor
has been also suggested by R. H. Tedford (pers. comm. in Spassov & Rook 2007).