The Early Pleistocene Gigantopithecus-Sinomastodon fauna from Juyuan karst cave in Boyue Mountain, Guangxi, South China

Abstract

As one of the most important Quaternary mammalian faunas in southern China, the Gigantopithecus-Sinomastodon fauna has received much attention. The large-primate fossil teeth newly collected from Juyuan karst cave in Boyue Mountain, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of southern China, can be identified as Gigantopithecus blacki. The morphology and size of these G. blacki teeth differ from those of the middle Pleistocene Gigantopithecus teeth which hold evidently larger dental dimensions and more complex crenulations from Hejiang Cave also in Guangxi and Tham Khuyen Cave in Vietnam. However, the G. blacki teeth from Juyuan Cave are relatively similar to those from Early Pleistocene Mohui Cave and Liucheng Gigantopithecus Cave both in Guangxi, which suggests that the three cave sites have similar age. The Juyuan fauna associated with Gigantopithecus blacki, consisting of 45 mammalian species (such as Sinomastodon yangziensis, Ailuropoda wulingshanensis, Stegodon huananensis, and Rhinoceros fusuiensis), is a typical Early Pleistocene Gigantopithecus-Sinomastodon fauna of southern China. The Juyuan fauna is mostly similar to Mohui fauna, also implying their contemporaneity. Paleomagnetic analyses demonstrate that the fossil-bearing sediments in Juyuan Cave are dominated by normal polarity. Combining the faunal analysis and magnetostratigraphic evidence, the Juyuan sediments can be best correlated with the Olduvai normal subchron, giving an estimated age of 1.8 Ma.