The "Yanghecun specimen", a proboscidean specimen represented by a mandible from Miocene of China and previously described as Gomphotheriidae, is here reviewed and described as a new genus and species of Mammutidae: Sinomammut tobieni. This taxon is a longirostrine mastodon, lacking lower tusks, and bearing a wide last molar with oblique and non-inflated lophids, broad transverse interlophids, ...

The present contribution reevaluates the fossil record of the genus Jaxea (Decapoda: Gebiidea: Laomediidae) and gives an emended diagnosis and an updated description of Jaxea kuemeli based on well preserved material from the lower and middle Miocene strata of Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. The species is distinguished from the extant J. nocturna on the basis of the tooth formula of the cheliped...

Litokoala is revised on the basis of new material from the early to middle Miocene deposits of Riversleigh. A new species of Litokoala is described from the System B Outasite Local Fauna. Litokoala garyjohnstoni sp. nov. possesses a unique combination of both plesiomorphic and apomorphic dental features, making its phylogenetic position within Litokoala difficult to interpret. In some aspects o...

Studies of the effects of the Central American Seaway’s closure on microfossil taxa and stable isotopes of foraminifera previously addressed the timing of emplacement of the Caribbean–tropical eastern Pacific sill, changes in marine nutrients, evolutionary and paleobiogeographic events associated with closure, and rates of uplift in Central America. However, there have been no quantitative stud...

The Giant Rat-kangaroos were placed in the Propleopinae by Archer & F\annery (1985) and in the Hypsiprymnodontidae by Ride (1993). Cladistic analysis of Ekaltadeta material from Riversleigh, northwestern Queensland (Wroe, 1996) suggested that a middle to late Miocene dichotomy in Ekaltadeta may have produced two lineages of Plio-Pleistocene Propleopus. indicating polyphyly for Propleopus and pa...

A review and reanalysis of geological, molecular, and paleontological data led O'Dea et al. (1) to propose (i) that reports by Montes et al. (2) and Bacon et al. (3) regarding a middle Miocene closure of the Central American Seaway (CAS) are unsupported, and (ii) a new age of the formation of the Isthmus at 2.8 million years ago (Ma). Here, we reject both of these conclusions.

At the end of the Middle Miocene the Caucasus represented a land forepart, the geographic position of which induced the development of peculiar flora and fauna in Eastern Georgia. On the territory of Eastern Georgia several reference fossil vertebrate sites are discovered, among them its worth mentioning Udabno (Maeotian), Dzedzvtakhevi (Maeotian), Iaghludja (Sarmatian-Maeotian), Kvabebi (Akcha...

BACKGROUND A number of aberrant walruses (Odobenidae) have been described from the Neogene of the North Pacific, including specialized suction-feeding and generalist fish-eating taxa. At least one of these fossil walruses has been hypothesized to have been a specialized predator of other marine mammals, the middle Miocene walrus Pelagiarctos thomasi from the Sharktooth Hill Bonebed of Californi...

Mass-transport deposits reveal something of the timing, source areas and depositional processes that contributed to the evolution of the New Jersey continental margin. Many of the mass-transport deposits rest upon prominent stratal surfaces and sequence boundaries permitting evaluation of the relationship between mass wasting and eustatic change. Five distinct mass-transport facies representati...

The early and middle Miocene in Turkey was characterised by a warm climate diversified rich vegetation. Many fossil angiosperm genera have been identified from this period. present study re-examined previously identifed new samples of wood remains. studied material included thin sections housed at the Department Forest Botany, Division Engineering, Faculty Forestry, Istanbul University-Cerrahpa...