First Byzantinia from Afro-Arabia and the evolutionary history of extinct cricetodontine rodents investigated through Bayesian phylogenetic inference

Abstract

The Cricetodontinae is a subfamily of extinct rodents from Europe, northern Africa, and Asia. Byzantinia is a cricetodontine genus that currently includes 10 species. This genus originated in Anatolia in the late Middle Miocene and became extinct at the end of the Miocene. Until now, Byzantinia was known only from Anatolia and Greece. Here, we report isolated molars of Byzantinia from a new locality close to Zahleh, Lebanon. These represent the first remains of Byzantinia from the Arabian area. All these teeth but one, which is very close to Byzantinia dardanellensis, belong to the new taxon Byzantinia rosamariae sp. nov. The evolutionary position of the two Lebanese Byzantinia species allows us to infer an age for this site of approximately 10.9–10 Ma. Bayesian tip-dating phylogenetic analyses, using morphological data for a large variety of cricetodontines, revealed that Anatolia served as the primary centre for speciation and dispersal of this rodent subfamily. This approach allowed us to infer the biogeographical history and time of divergence of the main cricetodontine lineages and sheds light on the evolutionary history of this group. The evolutionary position of the new Lebanese species is intermediate between Byzantinia sp. from Direcik I (Turkey) and B. nikosi from Biodrak (Greece), from which it diverged c. 11.85 Ma. These new Lebanese fossils provide the first physical evidence of the dispersal of these rodents into Afro-Arabia. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:2D8FD3C8-26E1-4C62-8D65-9D58666D70A3

Keywords:

• Rodentia
• Cricetodontinae
• Bayesian tip-dating
• fossilized birth-death process
• morphological clock
• palaeobiogeography

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the research projects ANR-22-CE02-0022 (MESRI/ANR) and PGC2018-094122-B-100, PID2020-113912GB-100, and CNS2023-144014 (MCIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 & ERDF).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2024.2329078.

Associate Editor: Guillaume Billet

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the research projects ANR-22-CE02-0022 (MESRI/ANR) and PGC2018-094122-B-100, PID2020-113912GB-100, and CNS2023-144014 (MCIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 & ERDF).