Abstract
A new mammal family, Olseniidae, is proposed based on a complete foot skeleton of cf. Olsenia sp. from the Eocene Toru Ajgyr locality in Kyrgyzstan and an astragalus of Olsenia mira from the Eocene Shara Murun locality in northern China. The new form cf. Olsenia sp. is an early ungulate that combines characteristics of mesonychids, perissodactyls and artiodactyls: tetradactyl and paraxonic foot, terminal phalanges claw-like but not fissured, astragalus with shallow proximal caput and without distal trochlea. This unique character set fills a gap in the fossil record and gives insights into the ungulate phylogeny, which is still not completely understood.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Dr. Alla B. Fortuna and Prof. Aker T. Turdukulov from the Seismological Institute Bishkek for their support in the organisation of the fieldwork as well as to Juri Buchantschenko and Thomas Knebel, University Halle, for their help during the excavation; to Prof. Kenneth D. Rose, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, and Prof. Ian Lerche, University of South Carolina, for comments and proofreading of the English text; to three unknown reviewers for their useful comments; to Angelika Franke, Halle, for the drawings. The expeditions have been supported by the German Science Foundation (Erf 197/3-3)
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Erfurt, J., Averianov, A. Enigmatic ungulate-like mammals from the Eocene of Central Asia. Naturwissenschaften 92, 182–187 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-004-0605-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-004-0605-x