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Primitive Tibetan antelope, Qurliqnoria hundesiensis (Lydekker, 1881) (Bovidae, Artiodactyla), from Pliocene Zanda and Kunlun Pass basins and paleoenvironmental implications

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Abstract

Well adapted to extremely cold winters (hypothermia) and low oxygen (hypoxia), the Tibetan antelope (or chiru), Pantholops hodgsonii Abel, is an iconic species in the Tibetan Plateau. Its extinct relative, Qurliqnoria Bohlin, represents the earliest endemic Tibetan mammal going back to the late Miocene, suggesting a long process of adaptations within Tibetan Plateau for ~ 10 million years. We reexamine holotype materials of Q. hundesiensis (Lydekker) from the British Museum, originally discovered by British explorers in the Himalayas in the early 1800s, and new materials recently discovered in the Pliocene strata of Zanda Basin, southwestern Tibet. We refer additional horncore and dental materials from the Kunlun Pass Basin at 4,700–4,900 m asl, and leverage these new data to place Q. hundesiensis within modern biostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental frameworks. Although Qurliqnoria remains the best candidate of a distant sister-group of living Pantholops, the Pliocene representatives offer no sign of transitions to living chiru. We infer that the Qurliqnoria lineage has persisted throughout late Miocene and Pliocene of the Tibetan Plateau in a chronospecies succession, i.e., Q. cheni to Q. hundesiensis. The Pliocene Qurliqnoria probably did not directly give rise to Pantholops, suggesting that a direct ancestor of Pantholops is yet to be found. We discuss the paleoenvironmental and paleoelevational implications of the new Qurliqnoria materials and analysis for Tibetan Plateau faunal evolution.

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Data availability

3D models of specimens described are available for download at https://www.morphosource.org/dashboard/collections/000434456/edit?locale=en& (see Material and method section).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Narimane Chatar for help in laser-scanning the holotype of Qurliqnoria hundesiensis (BMNH M10888 and M10889) and Bea Santaella Luna for photographs of Pantholops hodgsonii in the USNM collection. Dimitris Kostopoulos has kindly provided photographs of several Turkish specimens. We greatly appreciate the assistance from Stuart White to digitally assemble the British Museum holotype specimens. Alan Zdinak made repairs to specimens described herein and Yanping Song helped with processing of images in Photoshop. We appreciate the detailed comments and suggestions by two anonymous reviewers and an associated editor at JME, which greatly improved our manuscript. We also thank Darin Croft, Editor in Chief of JME, for his guidance.

Field works would not be possible without the enthusiastic participations by team members and drivers, both Chinese and Tibetan, of our Zanda expeditions. We greatly appreciate their dedications and spirits of adventure. We thank Pip Brewer and Nadine Gabriel for access to the fossil mammal collection at the Natural History Museum, London.

Funding

Funding for fieldwork and travel are provided by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB26030304), CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams, Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (nos. 40702004 to Q.L., 40730210 to T. D., 49872011, 40128004), Chinese Academy of Science Outstanding Overseas Scholar Fund (KL205208), National Science Foundation (US) (EAR-0446699, 0444073, 0958704, 1227212 to X.W.), and National Geographic Society (no. W22-08 to Q.L.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Vertebrate Paleontology, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Boulevard, 90007, CA, Los Angeles, USA

    Xiaoming Wang & Z. Jack Tseng

  2. Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100044, China

    Xiaoming Wang & Qiang Li

  3. CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing, 100044, China

    Qiang Li

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Qiang Li

  5. Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, University of California, 94720, CA, Berkeley, USA

    Z. Jack Tseng

Authors
  1. Xiaoming Wang
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  2. Qiang Li
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  3. Z. Jack Tseng
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Contributions

XW, QL, and ZJT led the field works that collected the materials in this study. XW and ZJT collected and analyzed the data. XW drafted the manuscript. All authors discussed, revised, and reviewed the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiaoming Wang or Z. Jack Tseng.

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Wang, X., Li, Q. & Tseng, Z.J. Primitive Tibetan antelope, Qurliqnoria hundesiensis (Lydekker, 1881) (Bovidae, Artiodactyla), from Pliocene Zanda and Kunlun Pass basins and paleoenvironmental implications. J Mammal Evol 30, 245–268 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-022-09632-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-022-09632-6

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