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The anthracotheres from northern Junggar Basin and their palaeoclimatic significance in relation to the Tibetan Plateau

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Abstract

Anthracotheres were an environmentally sensitive group that were thought to have become extinct from the middle-high latitudes of the northern hemisphere by the early Miocene. Hereby, the present author reports previously unpublished fossil bothriodonts, a group of anthracotheres, from the northern Junggar Basin, in China’s far northwest. An M3 of a small bothriodont Elomeryx sp., from the lower part of the Halamagai Formation, which is probably of the early middle Miocene age, is the only anthracothere record from the Neogene of northern China. More importantly, it is the latest anthracothere record from the middle-high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. The other teeth from Xiaerhete locality of the Irtysh River Formation, which is of the late Eocene age, are identified as Bakalovia sp. This poorly known genus was previously only reported from the middle or late Eocene of Southwest Europe. This study complements the sparse anthracothere fossil records of northwestern China. The present material, together with previous records, strongly suggests the occurrence of anthracothere interchanges between East Asia and both Europe and North America possibly from the middle or late Eocene to the early Oligocene. Anthracotheres declined remarkably in the Oligocene and Miocene in northern China, in contrast to their continued abundance in South and Southeast Asia at the same time, suggesting the existence of climate zonation and a faunal discontinuity in mammal distribution patterns between the northern and southern China. This zonation was probably related to the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, which altered atmospheric circulation throughout Eastern Asia.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks J. Meng, AMNH, USA and L. Costeur, NMB for facilitating access to anthracothere samples in the research collections of their respective institutions. I thank Q. Jiangzuo (IVPP) who provided photographs of specimens in the AMNH collections for comparison. I thank M. Pickford, (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France) B. Mennecart (NMB), M. Aiglstorfer (Naturhistorisches Museum Mainz, Germany), G. Markov (National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria), G. Konidaris (Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen, Germany), S. G. Abbas (University of the Punjab, Pakistan) and Q. Li and B. Bai (IVPP) for bibliographical assistant and their part in discussing the relevant issues; I thank Hanwen Zhang (University of Bristol) for improving the English, and J. Ye (IVPP) for providing important information on the geological context for this study. I thank X.-J. Ni (IVPP) for providing the geological information of the Eocene Xiaerhete locality. I thank C. Scotese for kindly allowing me to use the palaeogeography maps. Last but not least, gratitude is extended to M. Pickford and an anonymous reviewer for kindly reviewing the manuscript and providing much advice.

Funding

This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant nos. XDA20070203, XDB26000000), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (QYZDY-SSW-DQC022, GJHZ1885) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 41430102, 41625005, 41872001).

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Wang, SQ. The anthracotheres from northern Junggar Basin and their palaeoclimatic significance in relation to the Tibetan Plateau. Palaeobio Palaeoenv 101, 839–852 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-020-00441-4

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