New material of Miotragocerus (Bovidae, Artiodactyla) from northern China and its systematic implications

Abstract

Late Miocene tragoportacins are widespread in Eurasia and Africa and are important members of the Hipparion fauna. The phylogenetic relationships within the tragoportacins are debatable due to the large number of species, fragmentary materials, and large intraspecific variations. The Chinese tragoportacins are rare and poorly studied in previous work. Recently, a dozen well-preserved skulls were excavated from northern China, providing important information for the classification and phylogenetic analysis of the Chinese tragoportacins. In this study, we assign the new material from Linxia Basin and Fugu County to Miotragocerus gregarius, providing detailed descriptions of both males and females. We discuss sexual dimorphism and compare the horn core, dentition and cranium characters in Miotragocerus, Tragoportax and related species. We also perform cladistic analyses, including Eurasian and African tragoportacins, Tetracerus and Eotragus. The phylogenetic analysis indicates that the two Chinese late Miocene tragoportacins belong to Miotragocerus and Tragoportax, which immigrated from the west to China in different periods.

Keywords:

• Bovidae
• Tragoportacini
• phylogeny
• sexual dimorphism
• northern China
• late Miocene

Acknowledgements

We thank Zhan-Xiang Qiu and Nikolai Spassov for their helpful discussions in the research, Salvador Moyà-Solà, Dimitris Kostopoulos, and Loïc Costeur for providing photos, references, and helpful suggestions, L. Tomsett and R. Sabin for access to the modern bovid collection in NHMUK, Jan-Ove R. Ebbestad and Benjamin R. Kear for access to the fossil bovid collection in PMU, Jin Chen and Dongshen Li for access to the fossil and extant bovid collection in IVPP, Wen He and Shan-Qin Chen for access to the fossil bovids in Hezheng Paleozoological Museum, Wei Gao for taking photographs, Dan Su and Xue-Lin Zhang for preparation of the specimens. We thank the field team for their help in the field work. We thank Dimitris Kostopoulos and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable suggestions. This work was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (QYZDY-SSW-DQC022, GJHZ1885, XDB26000000, XDB31000000), and the Second Comprehensive Scientific Expedition on the Tibetan Plateau (2019QZKK0705).

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2023.2194891.

Associate Editor: Guillaume Billet

Additional information

Funding

We thank Zhan-Xiang Qiu and Nikolai Spassov for their helpful discussions in the research, Salvador Moyà-Solà, Dimitris Kostopoulos, and Loïc Costeur for providing photos, references, and helpful suggestions, L. Tomsett and R. Sabin for access to the modern bovid collection in NHMUK, Jan-Ove R. Ebbestad and Benjamin R. Kear for access to the fossil bovid collection in PMU, Jin Chen and Dongshen Li for access to the fossil and extant bovid collection in IVPP, Wen He and Shan-Qin Chen for access to the fossil bovids in Hezheng Paleozoological Museum, Wei Gao for taking photographs, Dan Su and Xue-Lin Zhang for preparation of the specimens. We thank the field team for their help in the field work. We thank Dimitris Kostopoulos and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable suggestions. This work was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (QYZDY-SSW-DQC022, GJHZ1885, XDB26000000, XDB31000000), and the Second Comprehensive Scientific Expedition on the Tibetan Plateau (2019QZKK0705).