Abstract
Recent extensive field prospecting conducted in the Upper Miocene of Lebanon resulted in the discovery of several new fossiliferous localities. One of these, situated in the Zahleh area (Bekaa Valley, central Lebanon) has yielded a particularly diverse vertebrate fauna. Micromammals constitute an important part of this assemblage because not only do they represent the first Neogene rodents and insectivores from Lebanon, but they are also the only ones from the early Late Miocene of the Arabian Peninsula and circumambient areas. Analyses of the murines from Zahleh reveal that they belong to a small-sized early Progonomys, which cannot be assigned to any of the species of the genus hitherto described. They are, thereby, shown to represent a new species: Progonomys manolo. Morphometric analyses of the outline of the first upper molars of this species suggest a generalist and omnivorous diet. This record sheds new light onto a major phenomenon in the evolutionary history of rodents, which is the earliest dispersal of mice. It suggests that the arrival of murines in Africa got under way through the Levant rather than via southern Europe and was monitored by the ecological requirements of Progonomys.
Highlights
The Murinae represent the largest subfamily of mammals, comprising 656 species and 135 genera[1]
Progonomys manolo is a primitive murine with small cheek teeth that lack any remnant of longitudinal connections between their cusps
By 11 Ma, this taxon extended its range from southern Asia through western Asia to reach Eastern Europe, from where it spread across central and western Europe
Summary
The Murinae represent the largest subfamily of mammals, comprising 656 species and 135 genera[1] This group of rodents constitutes one of the most evolutionarily successful clades of mammals, displaying an outstanding diversity, a virtually cosmopolitan distribution and a wide array of feeding preferences. They supposedly originated in the Middle Miocene of southern Asia, as their earliest representatives (Antemus) have been recorded in Siwaliks deposits about 14 Ma of age[2,3,4]. Our fieldworks resulted in the discovery of the first Progonomys from the whole Arabian area, which constitutes the first physical evidence about the dispersal of the earliest murines from southern Asia to Africa through the Levant
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