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The earliest record of birch mice from the Early Miocene Nei Mongol, China

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Abstract

The earliest species of birch mouse, Sicista primus sp. nov., was recovered from the 17-Ma-old (Early Miocene) Gashunyinadege locality, central Nei Mongol, China. It is ~9 Ma older than the previous first appearance datum of Sicista in Eurasia. This study indicates that North American Macrognathomys is a synonym of Eurasian Sicista, having 12 shared dental characters. As a result, the biogeography of dipodids indicates that Asian Sicista dispersed to North America as opposed to the hypothesis that Sicista originated from the North American clade. Sicista is one of the few extant rodent genera that originated as early as the Early Miocene.

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Abbreviations

IVPP:

Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing, China

USNM:

National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA

SDSM:

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, USA

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Acknowledgments

This study is financially supported by the Dallas Paleontological Society, the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University, and the Geological Society of America. I am deeply grateful to Z.-D. Qiu for exceptional opportunities he has given me. I greatly appreciate my adviser, L. Jacobs, and committee, D. Winkler, Y. Tomida, and A. Winkler. I extend hearty thanks to S. Y. Shelton (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology) for providing me casts of SDSM 8396 and R. Beavers for taking SEM images. Useful comments and suggestions provided by L. J. Flynn and three anonymous reviewers dramatically improved this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, 75275, USA

    Yuri Kimura

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  1. Yuri Kimura
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Correspondence to Yuri Kimura.

Electronic supplementary material

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S1

Summary of Kimura (2010) (DOC 1043 kb)

S2

Remeasurement of the holotype (SDSM 8396) of “M.” gemmacollis Green (1977) using a Keyence VHX-1000 digital microscope (at ×200). Cast is provided by South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. The m3/m1 and m2/m1 ratios in the cast are the same as those calculated from the outline of the original specimen drawn at ×50 using a camera lucida. The measurement differences between Green (1977) and this study probably come from measurement errors in Green (1977) (DOC 512 kb)

S3

Occlusal views of S. concolor concolor (A and B, USNM 200398) collected in Heilongjiang, China, and S. concolor flava (C and D, USNM 173796) collected in the Sind Valley, India. A and C, upper dentition; B and D, lower dentition. Scale bar equals 1 mm (DOC 147 kb)

S4

Length ratios of m3 to m1 and m2 to m1 of Plesiosminthus (DOC 35 kb)

S5

Summary of Kimura (in press b) (DOC 28 kb)

S6

Description of characters and character states used in the phylogenetic analysis of Kimura (in press b). Characters taken or modified from Wang et al. (2009) and López-Antoñanzas and Sen (2006) are indicated as WQ and LS in square brackets, respectively. All characters are equally unordered and unweighted (DOC 31 kb)

S7

Character matrix of for phylogenetic analysis of Plesiosminthus, Megasminthus and Sicista used in the phylogenetic analysis of Kimura (in press b). Missing or unknown data are coded as ‘?’. ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, and ‘F’ are designated for polymorphic character states, ‘0/1’, ‘0/2’, ‘0/3’, ‘1/2’, ‘2/3’, and ‘1/3’, respectively. Characters are listed in Supplementary Table 1 (DOC 36 kb)

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Kimura, Y. The earliest record of birch mice from the Early Miocene Nei Mongol, China. Naturwissenschaften 98, 87–95 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-010-0744-1

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