Dipodidae (Mammalia, Rodentia) from the Paleogene of south-east Serbia
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Dipodidae (Mammalia, Rodentia) from the Paleogene of south-east Serbia Wilma Wessels 1
&
Andrew A. van de Weerd 1
&
Hans de Bruijn 1 & Zoran Marković 2
Received: 6 September 2018 / Revised: 20 December 2018 / Accepted: 11 June 2019 # The Author(s) 2019
Abstract Isolated cheek teeth of the Asian dipodid Heosminthus primiveris from four early Oligocene localities in the Koritnica-Babušnica basin, south-east Serbia, are described. The record of the Paleogene Dipodidae of Central Asia and Europe is briefly discussed. The current view of the migration pattern of the Paleogene Dipodidae between central Asia and Europe is revised: the migration of Plesiosminthus into Europe during the late Oligocene was preceded by the immigration of Heosminthus into the SerboMacedonian high (S. E. Europe) during the early Oligocene. Keywords Eocene . Early Oligocene . Rodentia . Dipodidae . South-east Serbia
Introduction 1
The Dipodidae described in this paper are part of the late Eocene-early Oligocene small mammal assemblages found in south-east Serbia. The geological setting and composition of these faunas (consisting mainly of rodents) have been described by de Bruijn et al. (2018). Three rodent groups have been studied and papers are online and printed: the Diatomyidae (Marković et al. 2018), the Melissiodontinae (Wessels et al. 2018) and the Paracricetodontinae (van de Weerd et al. 2018), while publications on the Pappocricetodontinae are online (de Bruijn et al. in press) and the Pseudoricetodontinae are in 1
This is the seventh paper in the series: “The Paleogene rodent faunas from south-east Serbia”.
* Wilma Wessels [email protected] Andrew A. van de Weerd [email protected] Hans de Bruijn [email protected] Zoran Marković [email protected] 1
Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University, Princetonlaan 8A, 3584 CB, P.O. Box 80021, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands
2
Natural History Museum in Belgrade, Njegoševa 51, Belgrade 11000, Serbia
preparation (Marković et al. in press). Table 1 shows the distribution of rodent species in these faunas. One new site, RaljinB, was sampled in 2017 and in 2018; it is included in Table 1. The site is at the same location as Raljin, but stratigraphically about 2 m higher. The extant Dipodidae Fischer, 1817 occupy a diverse array of ecological niches and consequently shows a wide range of morphological adaptations. The fossil record of the family suggests that the family originated in Asia during the early Eocene and that the radiation that leads to the present day diversity occurred during the Oligocene. Pisano et al. (2015) reconstructed phylogenetic relationships of the family based on molecular evidence. As far as we are aware none of the extant genera can be traced to its Eocene ancestor (Lopatin 1999, 2004; Lopatin and Zazhigin 2000). The history of the Dipodidae in Asia is very different from that in Europe, so a concise overview of the Paleogene record in these two areas is considered appropriate. Until recently, the oldest record of the Dipodidae in centr
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