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New fossils of the Early Pleistocene Equus huanghoensis (Equidae, Perissodactyla) from Nihewan in Hebei province of China

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Abstract

This paper describes new fossils of Equus huanghoensis from an Early Pleistocene bed in Nihewan, Hebei Province, which confirms the classification of E. huanghoensis by Chinese researchers. The new fossils include a relatively complete male skull and mandible with all upper and lower dentition, a broken female skull with fragment of mandible and a broken Mc III of Equus sp. The fossils were collected from the Yangshuizhan site of Nihewan. The age of the formation is about 1.6 Ma. The new materials verify some classification characteristics based on teeth published in previous descriptions. These characteristics include large teeth size, short protocone, and tilted protoloph and metaloph. We have added to these characteristics of large skull size, a developed protuberantia supramagna, pentagonal nuchal side, weak Pli cabaline, simple enamel plications; a series of new characteristics strikingly different from the other Equus horses. The broken Mc III is similar to Equus qingyangensis from Qingyang, Gansu

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Correspondence to YunXiang Zhang.

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Li, Y., Zhang, Y., Sun, B. et al. New fossils of the Early Pleistocene Equus huanghoensis (Equidae, Perissodactyla) from Nihewan in Hebei province of China. Sci. China Earth Sci. 59, 83–94 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-015-5138-y

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