Abstract
Ctenodactylinae (gundis) is a clade of rodents that experienced, in Miocene time, their greatest diversification and widest distribution. They expanded from the Far East, their area of origin, to Africa, which they entered from what would become the Arabian Peninsula. Questions concerning the origin of African Ctenodactylinae persist essentially because of a poor fossil record from the Miocene of Afro-Arabia. However, recent excavations in the Late Miocene of Lebanon have yielded a key taxon for our understanding of these issues. Proafricanomys libanensis nov. gen. nov. sp. shares a variety of dental characters with both the most primitive and derived members of the subfamily. A cladistic analysis demonstrates that this species is the sister taxon to a clade encompassing all but one of the African ctenodactylines, plus a southern European species of obvious African extraction. As such, Proafricanomys provides the 'missing link' between the Asian and African gundis.
Highlights
In Lebanon more than half a century earlier[10], but only the remains of the most common component were described in some detail[11]
Not from Africa or even the African plate, it is the sister-species of the clade composed of all but one of the ctenodactylines that have originated in Africa
Proafricanomys libanensis may be seen as the most evolved of the non-African ctenodactylines
Summary
In Lebanon more than half a century earlier[10], but only the remains of the most common component (horses) were described in some detail[11]. One of the localities has yielded vertebrate remains, mainly fishes, turtles, and crocodiles, and micromammals, including the first Late Miocene ctenodactyline from the Arabian Plate. This site is situated close to the spring of Aïn-el-Daouk, immediately North-West of the town of Zahleh (Bekaa Valley, central Lebanon). Dubertret and Vautrin[12] first attributed these deposits to the 'Pontian' (Messinian), but without paleontological support. The aim of the present work is to describe the ctenodactyline teeth uncovered at this locality and analyse the significance of this novel taxon
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