Researcher Deng Tao from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and others recently published in the international journal Zootaxa a new species of Eostylopsus discovered in the Late Miocene strata of the Linxia Basin in Gansu. , its age is 8 million years ago. According to research, this new species has the world's first known skull fossil of an Eostela anthrax.
Austrian paleontologist Otto Zdansky established Eostyloceros and its two species in 1925 based on late Miocene materials collected from Wuxiang County, Shanxi Province. This species has since been reported in Asia and Europe. Some other species of the genus. However, the establishment of these species is based on antler materials, and most of them are incomplete. No skulls connected to the antlers have been found, so their reliability is highly doubtful.
The Linxia Basin in Gansu is famous for its rich late Cenozoic mammal fossils. A muntjac skull with complete antlers was recently discovered during field surveys in Hezheng County in the basin. The new material discovered in the Linxia Basin has been studied as the first known skull fossil of Eostyloceros in the world. According to its establishment, the new species and policy Eostyloceros (Eostyloceros hezhengensis sp.nov.) is a large muntjac. . The developed longitudinal ridge on the lateral edge of the frontal bone of the new species is connected to the horn stalk backward; the horn stalk is short, thick and cylindrical, extending backward from behind the orbit; the main branch and eyebrow branch of the antlers are at an angle of 30 degrees from each other. Angular rings emerge; the main branch is quite long, the tip is strongly curved backwards; the eyebrow branch is straight, located anteromedial to the main branch; the main branch is laterally flat, while the cross section of the eyebrow branch is round.
Paleontologists previously knew very little about the phylogenetic relationships of Eostelacerus, but cladistic analysis based on new materials established for the first time a detailed pedigree including the various species within Eostelacerus as well as the genus and other muntjacs. Morphological observation, combined with cladistic analysis and principal component analysis, indicates that the original characters of Hezheng's antlered deer include shorter horn stalks, lower branches on the horn rings, slimmer brow branches, and the angle between the brow branches and the main branch. Rather small, proving that this new species is in a more basal position than any known species of the genus.
Figure 1 The skull fossil of the Hezhengshijiantler deer collected from the Linxia Basin in Gansu Province
Figure 2 Sketch of the skull fossil of Hezhengzhengzhuangler deer and the cross-sectional changes of its antlers
animal tags：
you may also like
The most primitive gnathostomes discovered so far are placoderms (class). They first appeared in the late Silurian Period and flourished for a while in the Devonian Period. Placoderms also have bony armor to protect their bodies, usually wrapped around the front of their...
Because lungfish have lungs and internal nostrils that can breathe air, they have long been considered the earliest terrestrial tetrapod vertebrates—the ancestors or close relatives of amphibians. By the end of the 19th century, lungfishes were once replaced by lobe-finned fishes as the ance...
Zhu Min’s team at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences has made new progress in the field of early vertebrate animal research. On March 8, the magazine "PLOS ONE" reported the latest scientific research results of Dr. Chu Bulan and other...
In the past ten years, a series of skull fossils of Indarctos, Agriotherium and Ursavus have been discovered in the sediments of the Late Miocene Liushu Formation in the Linxia Basin, Gansu. A complete skull of Ursus has never been found and reported in the world before, so many questions abo...
The discovery of ancient human fossils in Zhoukoudian made Bu Dasheng, who was deeply involved in the "Central Asian Fever", extremely excited. He decided to include the excavation and research of Zhoukoudian as a "related additional project" in his Central Asia expedition plan in cooperation...
As early as the late Triassic, when dinosaurs had just entered the evolutionary stage, a group of small animals that were inconspicuous at the time differentiated from therodonts among therapsid reptiles. They were born at the wrong time, because in the long years from the Jurassic to the Cre...
Clupeomorpha fish are divided into two categories: Clupeoformes (such as sardines and Yangtze swordfish, etc.) and the extinct Ellimmichthyiformes. Eram herrings, commonly known as double armored herrings, were first recorded in the Early Cretaceous and continued into the Oligocene (Oligocene...
"Scientific Reports" published on May 24, 2016 reported a new genus and species of mammals discovered in the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota - Luo's Late Teeth - jointly researched by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Linyi University. Beast (Anebodo...
Email: jsset#163.com (change # to @) Please indicate your purpose of visit! Guangdong ICP No. 2022053326 XML| map| Chinese
