Search the Article Database:

Search our library of articles, papers and other published materials. You can use keywords or boolean-style search:

Some New Remains of Middle Miocene Mammals from the Chinji Formation, Northern Pakistan

New mammalian material excluding proboscideans described from four main fossil sites of the Chinji Formation, northern Pakistan, allow identifying Miotragocerus gluten, Tragoportax cf. punjabicus, Elachistoceras sp., Helicoportax sp., Boselaphini sp. indet., Gazella sp., Giraffokeryx punjabiensis, Giraffa priscilla, Dorcatherium minus, Microbunodon silistrensis, Merycopotamus nanus, Listriodon pentapotamiae, Conohyus sindiensis, Gaindatherium browni and Hespanotherium matritense. The tooth positions of all the fifteen species are documented. The findings enlarge our knowledge on the anatomic features of the described species. Quantitatively, the bovid taxa are

View Details + Download

True Ungulates From the Nagri Type Locality (Late Miocene), Northern Pakistan

The early Late Miocene type locality of the Nagri Formation from the Indo-Siwaliks has yielded remains of the true ungulates that are today extinct to the south Asian biogeographic realm. Thirteen species including Brachypotherium, Hipparion, Listriodon and the bovids of the true ungulates from the village Sethi Nagri, district Chakwal, Punjab, Pakistan, are recognized, described and discussed in details. The tooth positions of all thirteen species are documented. Quantitatively, the taxa of the bovids are the most predominant. But Brachypotherium,

View Details + Download

Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies of Ruminantia and the Alternative Position of the Moschidae

The ruminants constitute the largest group of ungulates, with >190 species, and its distribution is widespread throughout all continents except Australia and Antarctica. Six families are traditionally recognized within the suborder Ruminantia: Antilocapridae (pronghorns), Bovidae (cattle, sheep, and antelopes), Cervidae (deer), Giraffidae (giraffes and okapis), Moschidae (musk deer), and Tragulidae (chevrotains). The interrelationships of the families have been an area of controversy among morphology, palaeontology, and molecular studies, and almost all possible evolutionary scenarios have been proposed in the literature.

View Details + Download

The phylogeny of Cetartiodactyla: The importance of dense taxon sampling, missing data, and the remarkable promise of cytochrome b to provide reliable species-level phylogenies

We perform Bayesian phylogenetic analyses on cytochrome b sequences from 264 of the 290 extant cetartiodactyl mammals (whales plus even-toed ungulates) and two recently extinct species, the ‘Mouse Goat’ and the ‘Irish Elk’. Previous primary analyses have included only a small portion of the species diversity within Cetartiodactyla, while a complete supertree analysis lacks resolution and branch lengths limiting its utility for comparative studies. The benefits of using a single-gene approach include rapid phylogenetic estimates for a large number of

View Details + Download

A complete estimate of the phylogenetic relationships in Ruminantia: a dated species-level supertree of the extant ruminants

This paper presents the first complete estimate of the phylogenetic relationships among all 197 species of extant and recently extinct ruminants combining morphological, ethological and molecular information. The composite tree is derived by applying matrix representation using parsimony analysis to 164 previous partial estimates, and is remarkably well resolved, containing 159 nodes (>80% of the potential nodes in the completely resolved phylogeny). Bremer decay index has been used to indicate the degree of certainty associated with each clade. The ages

View Details + Download

New artiodactyl ruminant mammal from the late Oligocene of Pakistan

Dental and postcranial material of the bovid−like ruminant Palaeohypsodontus zinensis sp. nov. is reported from the Oligocene of the Bugti Hills (Balochistan, Pakistan). This finding extends the geographic distribution of this dentally highly derived ruminant, which was previously restricted to the early Oligocene of Mongolia and China. The inclusion of Palaeohypsodontus within the Bovidae is disputed on the basis of astragalus characters, and the taxonomic status of the Oligo−Miocene Eurasian bovid−like ruminants is briefly discussed. It is concluded that the

View Details + Download

The tribal radiation of the family Bovidae (Artiodactyla) and the evolution of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene

The nucleotide sequence of the complete mitochondrial cytochrome b gene has been determined and compared for 51 species of the family Bovidae and 10 potential pecoran and tragulid outgroups. A detailed saturation analysis at each codon position relative to the maximum parsimony procedure indicates that all transitions on third codon positions do not accumulate in a similar fashion: C-T are more saturated than A-G substitutions. The same trend is observed for second positions but not for first positions where A-G

View Details + Download

Suidae, Tragulidae, Giraffidae, and Bovidae

The upper Miocene vertebrate locality of Küçükçekmece West, European Turkey, had provided an artiodactyl assemblage that is rich in species but poor in specimens. The present study allows revising previous artiodactyl lists provided for this site, by recognizing Hippopotamodon cf. antiquus, Dorcatherium maliki n. sp., Palaeotragus sp. (large size), Palaeogiraffa pamiri (Ozansoy, 1965), Bohlinia cf. attica, Gazella cf. ancyrensis, Majoreas cf. elegans, Prostrepsiceros sp., aff. Protoryx cf. enanus, cf. Miotragocerus sp., and Bovidae indet. (large size). The presence of a

View Details + Download