Abstract
Abstract The Yuanmou hominid site is a rare Late Miocene fossil locality in southern China, where thousands of fossil specimens of the ape Lufengpithecus hudiensis have been found. These have been well studied, but the taxonomy of other mammalian groups is not fully understood. This is especially the case for large predator Felidae, which play a key role in the palaeo-environment in which these fossil apes lived. Here we study the systematics of fossil Felidae from Yuanmou, which is composed of four species of machairodonts: Amphimachairodus cf. horribilis, Longchuansmilus xingyongi gen. & sp. nov., aff. Yoshi sp., Machairodontinae gen. & sp. indet. and one species of feline, Felinae gen. & sp. indet. Longchuansmilus xingyongi is a member of Machairodontini, related to Lokotunjailurus and possibly two derived species of Paramachaerodus, i.e. P. orientalis and P. maximiliani. The high diversity of machairodonts suggests a unique palaeo-environment of the Yuanmou Basin during the Late Miocene, different from northern Eurasia or modern south-eastern Asia. An analysis of body size and intraguild competition suggests that aff. Yoshi sp. and Machairodontinae gen. & sp. indet. are probably regular predators of the fossil great ape, which may have pushed the high evolutionary rate of the fossil ape.
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