Abstract
Pseudocricetodontines from the late Eocene and early Oligocene of south-east Serbia are described. The Pseudocricetodontinae is a clade with a Eurasian geographical range during most of the Oligocene. The subfamily and genera included are briefly discussed. Originally, it contained Pseudocricetodon and Heterocricetodon only, but the number of genera included has grown to at least seven genera during the last decades. Differences in opinion about the content of the subfamily are for a part due to lack of studies in which the Paleogene cricetids from Asia and Europe are directly compared. The material from south-east Serbia described below is assigned to three species: Pseudocricetodon cf. montalbanensis Thaler, 1969, P. heissigi nov. sp. and Heterocricetodon serbicus nov. sp.
Highlights
The Pseudocricetodontinae described in this paper are a part of late Eocene-early Oligocene small mammal assemblages found in south-east Serbia
The teeth from Strelac-1 and Strelac-3 identified as P. cf. montalbanensis fit morphologically within the individual variation of the assemblage from the type locality of that species studied by Freudenthal et al (1994)
The specimens from Serbia are as large as or larger than the largest specimens from the type locality Montalban. This small, presumably ground-dwelling, murid that was originally described from the early Oligocene (MP23) of Montalban in Spain has later been recognised in, among others, the assemblages from the late Eocene of Süngülü in eastern Turkey and the late Oligocene (MP27) locality Gaimersheim in Bavaria (Kristkoitz 1992)
Summary
The Pseudocricetodontinae described in this paper are a part of late Eocene-early Oligocene small mammal assemblages found in south-east Serbia. The geological setting and composition of these faunas (consisting mainly of rodents) have been described by de Bruijn et al (2018) Four rodent groups have been studied and published in print resp. This article is registered in Zoobank under urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:FB7A98CC-D7CF-4899-8A00B5C4105F1086. This is the sixth paper in the series: “The Paleogene rodent faunas from south-east Serbia”. The subfamily Pseudocricetodontinae contains the genera Pseudocricetodon and Heterocricetodon; it has a wide geographical distribution (Eurasia) and occurs from the latest Eocene to the latest Oligocene. In 1987, Engesser included both Pseudocricetodon and Heterocricetodon into the Pseudocricetodontinae, which is supported by the studies of the microstructure of incisor enamel (Kalthoff 2000, 2006). A short review of the taxonomy of this group of rodents is included
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