Late Miocene large mammals from Mahmutgazi, Denizli province, Western Turkey
Author
Denis Geraards
text
Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie-Abhandlungen
2017
2017-04-05
284
3
241
257
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/schweiz/njbgeol/2017/00000284/00000003/art00001
journal article
10.1127/njgpa/2017/0661
ad4878aa-a20b-466e-b960-8e5568368f3e
1425511
Family
Equidae
GRAY,
1821
I shall only briefly report on this group.
STAESCHE & SONDAAR (1979)
mentioned that they included the Karlsruhe material in their study of the Turkish hipparions but, although they provide the measurements of a number of teeth, they do not mention postcranials from Mahmutgazi, and seemingly included all hipparions from this site in a single species,
Hipparion matthewi
.
The most significant fossils in the
SMNK
are eight metapodials and a number of upper and lower tooth-rows, but no remain includes the preorbital part of the skull, consistently used in
hipparion
systematics. The main measurements of six relatively complete metatarsals are plotted in
Fig. 6
; they clearly indicate the presence of two species, each with remarkably little intra-specific variation. The lengths of the bones of the two species are not very different, but the shorter ones are much more slender. The measurements of two metacarpals display the same pattern: one is shorter and much more slender than the other (
I
follow here the tradition in using Simpson diagrams, although in fact they show little more than gross differences in size; obviously, multivariate analyses would be better adapted but, beyond a brief attempt by
KOUFOS & VLACHOU [2005]
, they have been neglected).
Differences in tooth-row lengths (
Table 8
) are also quite clear, and the distribution of individual tooth lengths is clearly bimodal (
STAESCHE & SONDAAR 1979, fig. 26
), confirming the existence of two species.