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The Fossil Record of Tragulids (Mammalia: Artiodactyla: Tragulidae) in Greece

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Fossil Vertebrates of Greece Vol. 2

Abstract

Tragulidae is a family of basal ruminants restricted during its whole evolutionary history to the Old World. In Greece, fossil tragulids are known from few localities, dated from the upper part of the early Miocene (Orleanian, MN4/5 boundary) to the late Miocene (late Turolian, MN13). In most cases, the tragulid findings from Greece are few and fragmentary, so they do not facilitate always a precise specific determination. Most specimens are attributed to Dorcatherium, whereas some specimens indicate the presence in Greece of Dorcabune as well. However, as many recent studies have shown, Dorcatherium most probably is paraphyletic and needs detailed revision which in the future could change the specific context of the genus. One species of Dorcatherium has been named from the country, and particularly from the Late Miocene of Northern Greece. This species, Dorcatherium puyhauberti, was possibly present in localities outside Greece as well.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to deeply thank G. D. Koufos for providing photographs of tragulid material from Antonios and G. Rössner for valuable comments that improved this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Geology and Geoenvironment, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Socrates Roussiakis

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  1. Socrates Roussiakis
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Correspondence to Socrates Roussiakis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Museo Paleontólogico Egidio Feruglio, CONICET, Trelew, Chubut, Argentina

    Evangelos Vlachos

Appendix

Appendix

List of localities with occurrences of fossil Tragulidae in Greece arranged in geochronological order. The age of each locality is based on the most recent data available as explained on the main text. The taxonomy follows the present revision and the superscript numbers correspond to the first original publication. Type localities are marked with bold. Locality numbers refer to the collection numbers of the PaleoBiology Database (PBDB)

LocalitiesPBDB

Age (ELMA; MN)

Taxon

Dytikó 332376

Late Miocene (late Turolian, MN13)

Dorcatherium sp.1

Dytikó 232375

Late Miocene (late Turolian, MN13)

Dorcatherium sp.1

Kerassiá195431

Late Miocene (middle Turolian, MN12)

Dorcatherium sp.2

Vathýlakkos 3182750

Late Miocene (middle Turolian, MN12)

Dorcatherium puyhauberti3

Kastéllios Hill205364

Late Miocene (early Vallesian, ΜΝ9)

cf. Dorcabune anthracotheroides4

Mélambes208183

Middle Miocene (Astaracian)

MN6 or early MN7/8

Dorcatherium sp.5

Thymianá (Michalos)182,752

Middle Miocene (late Orleanian, MN5)

Dorcatherium sp.6

Thymianá-1

Middle Miocene (late Orleanian, MN5)

Dorcatherium sp.7

Thymianá B202728

Middle Miocene (late Orleanian, MN5)

Dorcatherium sp.8

Antónios73861

Early Miocene (Orleanian, MN4/MN5)

Dorcatherium guntianum9

Dorcatherium cf. crassum9

Dorcabune cf. anthracotheroides9

Dorcatherium sp.9

  1. 1Bouvrain and de Bonis (2007), 2van der Made and Moyà-Solà (1989), 3Arambourg and Piveteau (1929), 4van der Made (1996), 5Bonneau and Ginsburg (1974), 6Paraskevaidis (1940), 7Lehmann and Tobien (1995), 8de Bonis et al. (1998), 9Koufos (2020)

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Roussiakis, S. (2022). The Fossil Record of Tragulids (Mammalia: Artiodactyla: Tragulidae) in Greece. In: Vlachos, E. (eds) Fossil Vertebrates of Greece Vol. 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68442-6_11

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