DOI: 10.15468/auhnmy
title: A new late Miocene bovid (Mammalia: Artiodactyla: Bovidae) from ˙ orakyerler (Turkey)

description: This dataset contains the digitized treatments in Plazi based on the original journal article Kostopoulos, Dimitris S., Erol, Ayla Sevim, Yavuz, Alper Yener, Mayda, Serdar (2021): A new late Miocene bovid (Mammalia: Artiodactyla: Bovidae) from ˙ orakyerler (Turkey). Fossil Record 24 (1): 9-18, DOI: 10.5194/fr-24-9-2021, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/fr-24-9-2021Abstract. We describe here five new bovid crania from the ˙orakyerler fossil site (Tüglu Formation, ˙ankırı Basin, north-central Anatolia, Turkey), the fauna of which is dated by magneto- and biostratigraphy to the late Miocene, around the Vallesian–Turolian boundary. The material is assigned to a new bovid taxon of medium-to-large size, Gangraia anatolica gen. and sp. nov., characterized by horn cores that are long, keelless, compressed, obliquely inserted on the frontals, transversally ridged, moderately diverging from each other, slightly twisted homonymously, and sigmoidally curved in lateral view with long, fairly straight tips. The horn core features, along with the presence of a single large sinus occupying the pedicle and the base of the horn core, a strong cranial flexion, a short braincase, the presence of a distinct dorsal parietal boss, wide-apart temporal crests, and a widened anteriorly basioccipital, indicate a mixture of caprine-like and alcelaphine-like features that relate Gangraia anatolica gen. and sp. nov. to the Alcelaphini–Caprini– Hippotragini clade.1 IntroductionThe ˙orakyerler fossil site (40 ◦ 36 Į 32 ĮĮ N, 33 ◦ 38 Į 01 ĮĮ E; altitude 747 m) is located in the fluvial floodplain deposits of the Tüglu Formation in the ˙ankırı Basin of north-central Anatolia (Turkey) (Sickenberg, 1975; Kaymakçi et al., 2001). The locality was discovered in the early 1970s but became known worldwide after the 2000s due to its hominoid findings (e.g. Sevim Erol et al., 2001, 2020; Begun et al., 2003; Güleç et al., 2007). Systematic excavations from 2001 onwards led by one of us (Ayla Sevim Erol) allowed us to considerably increase the identifiable fossil mammal remains that now reach nearly 4000 specimens, representing mostly hipparionine horses, bovids, giraffids, rhinos, and carnivores (Sevim Erol et al., 2020). Published biochronological and magnetostratigraphic data (e.g. Köhler, 1987; Ünay et al., 2006; Güleç et al., 2007; Geraads, 2013; Kaya et al., 2016) suggest an early Turolian age for the ˙orakyerler fauna, though an older (latest Vallesian) age is not yet dismissed (e.g. Kostopoulos et al., 2020).Köhler (1987) studied a limited bovid sample collected by Sickenberg’s team, whereas Geraads (2013) provided a brief description of the bovid material collected around 2000 (collection numbers up to ˙O 450). More recently, Kostopoulos et al. (2020) added to the faunal list of the site the new bovid species Qurliqnoria chorakensis Kostopoulos, Sevim Erol, Mayda, Yavus, and Tarhan, 2020, based on material collected between 2001 and 2018. Within the frame of the same study undertaken in summer 2019 in the Faculty of Languages, History, and Geography of Ankara University, a medium/large-sized bovid with unusual horn core and cranial appearance has been revealed. In this study, we describe this new taxon and discuss its possible phylogenetic relationships within Bovidae.