A new giraffe ossicone from Wolf Camp, Tunggur Formation, Inner Mongolia suggests a new genus in Bohlinini (Artiodactyla, Giraffidae)
Xiaoming Wang, Nikos Solounias, Su-kuan Hou, Lu Li, Yukimitsu Tomida
TL;DR
A newly discovered giraffe ossicone from Inner Mongolia suggests a new genus in the evolution of giraffes.
Contribution
The discovery introduces a new genus, Qilin, based on a uniquely shaped ossicone from the Middle Miocene.
Findings
The new ossicone morphology led to the naming of a new genus, Qilin.
Qilin tungurensis shares dental traits with Bohlinini, supporting its classification in this tribe.
The ossicone and limb features suggest an important stage in giraffine evolution.
Abstract
The classic Middle Miocene Wolf Camp locality discovered in 1930 by the Third Asiatic Expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History has been long known to produce an extinct giraffe, Palaeotragus tungurensis Colbert, 1936. Its dental and limb morphology offers tantalizing clues to a close relationship to the living giraffe, Giraffa. Its ossicone, a key part of the giraffe anatomy, is unknown since its initial description. Our discovery, in 2011, of an almost perfectly preserved ossicone from Wolf Camp thus fills this void and is described herein. Novel morphology of the ossicone, unlike any known so far, warrants a new generic name, Qilin, and Q. tungurensis adds important evidence that this Middle Miocene record from Inner Mongolia represents a key taxon in the evolution of the subfamily Giraffinae. Ossicone morphology is fundamentally similar to that of living Giraffa as well…
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Taxonomy
TopicsEvolution and Paleontology Studies · Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology