Eucyon minor ( Teilhard de Chardin & Piveteau, 1930 )

Rook, Lorenzo, 2009, The wide ranging genus Eucyon Tedford & Qiu, 1996 (Mammalia, Carnivora, Canidae, Canini) in the Mio-Pliocene of the Old World, Geodiversitas 31 (4), pp. 723-741 : 729-730

Eucyon minor ( Teilhard de Chardin & Piveteau, 1930)

Canis chihliensis var. minor Teilhard de Chardin & Piveteau, 1939 ; see Rook 1993; Tedford & Qiu 1996.

TYPE LOCALITY. — Nihewan ( China).

AGE. — Late Pliocene; Haiyan Fm. correlative, early Matuyama.

GEOGRAPHIC RANGE. — China, Mongolia, Transbaikalia.

This is a relatively late Eucyon species known from the “Villafranchian” (Nihewanian) of China (the deposits from Nihewan of Teilhard de Chardin & Piveteau (1930) are correlative with the Haiyan Fm. of the Yushe Basin, dated by magnetostratigraphy to the early Matuyama; Flynn et al. 1991; R. H. Tedford pers. comm. in Rook 1993). Other specimens of E. cf. minor from the late Pliocene of Mongolia ( Rook 1993) are kept within the collections of the Institute of Geology in Moscow (GIN), from three Pliocene sites (MN 16, early Villafranchian; Pevzner et al. 1982; Vislobokova et al. 2001): Shamar, Beregovaja and Udunga ( Fig. 2 ).

The specimen from Udunga has been described by Sotnikova & Kalmykov (1991) as Canis sp. The samples from Shamar and Beregovaja have been listed by Kurtén (1974) as coyote-like dogs. The lower carnassial morphology of the Shamar and Beregovaja specimens have the typical characteristics of the genus Eucyon . Rook (1993), on the basis of dental morphology and the similarities with E. minor from China, attributed this material to E. cf. minor . More recently, Sotnikova (2004) proposed the same taxonomic placement for the larger of the two Shamar mandibles, but suggested an attribution to a new species for the smaller one. An attribution of the Shamar and Beregovaja specimens to E. cf. minor has been also suggested by R. H. Tedford (pers. comm. in Spassov & Rook 2007).

Figures

FIG. 2. — The early and mid-Pliocene Eucyon Tedford & Qiu, 1996 distribution: A, during early and mid-Pliocene times (◇) the genus Eucyon had a wide distribution across Eurasia. The very late record of the genus (○, late Pliocene/middle Villafranchian) seems to be limited to central Asia and to the more arid areas of eastern Eurasia (Turkey, North Africa); B, the typical Pliocene species from Europe E. adoxus (Martin, 1973) from St-Estève (near Perpignan, France; MN 15), cast of skull (approximate length 18 cm) and mandible (reversed) RSS-45 (Basel Naturhistorisches Museum);C, E. davisi (Merriam, 1911) from Hsia Kou (Yushe basin, China; Pliocene),cast of skull (approximate length 15 cm) F:AM-97056 (American Museum of Natural History, New York); D, E. zhoui Tedford & Qiu, 1996 from Chao Chuang (Yushe basin, China; Pliocene), cast of skull (reversed) and mandibular ramus (approximate length of mandibular ramus 10 cm) F:AM-97048 (American Museum of Natural History, New York).