Dorcatherium cf. jourdani Depéret, 1887

Geraads, Denis, Kaya, Tanju & Mayda, Serdar, 2005, Late Miocene large mammals from Yulafli, Thrace region, Turkey, and their biogeographic implications, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 50 (3), pp. 523-544 : 536

Dorcatherium cf. jourdani Depéret, 1887

Type locality and age: Lyon Croix−Rousse, Vallesian, Miocene.

Material from Yulafl I.—TTMEU−CY−139, dentary with slightly worn m3; TTMEU−CY−140, dentary with p4−m3, in middle wear; TTMEU−CY−141, dentary with p4−m1; TTMEU−CY−141, metatarsals III−IV, lacking distal ends.

Description.—TTMEU−CY−140 has the most complete tooth series, as it includes also the alveolus for p3, which was about as long as p4. The latter is a long narrow tooth, not very much broader across the talonid than across its anterior lobe, which is also relatively long. The morphology of m3 is best seen on TTMEU−CY−139 (Fig. 10H). The labial crescents are fully selenodont, and the tooth is not very brachyodont. The disto−labial wing of the protoconid meets the hypoconid, while its disto−lingual wing joins the mesial end of the entoconid, which is rather more labial than the disto−labial wing of the metaconid, which curves labially near its distal end. The third lobe is large and forms a complete loop; the lingual wall is thin but reaches the disto−lingual corner of the hypoconid. The ectostylid is weak, as on the other specimens, but it is larger on the m1 of TTMEU−CY−141, a dentary with the ascending ramus preserved (Fig. 10I). The labial cingulum is weak. Measurements are given in Table 5.

Comparisons.—As acknowledged by most authors, systematics of Dorcatherium is not easy, because of dental uniformity and overlap of size ranges between species. Furthermore, the genus is not common in the Eurasian upper Miocene, and descriptions are very scarce. The m3s are larger than a Vallesian tooth from Sigindere (Alçitepe) near Gelibolu, in the TTMEU (length of m3 = 17.8), but slightly smaller than an m3 from Kozbaşi near Çanakkale, a locality which is probably also of Vallesian age, as shown by the occurrence of Hippopotamodon antiquus . They are also slightly larger than the teeth from Eppelsheim, whose length was given as 17–19 mm by Kaup (1832). Their dimensions are almost identical with those from the type locality of the Vallesian, Los Valles de Fuentidueña, which were given by Morales and Soria (1981) as 12.1 × 5.4 and 20.1 × 8.8 for p4 and m3 respectively. However, the p4s from Yulafli lack the disto−labial expansion of the hypoconid present in the illustrated tooth from Spain ( Morales and Soria 1981: fig. 1C). Both the m3 and m1–m3 lengths at Yulafli are similar to those of D. jourdani from Küçükçekmece. The latter measurement is given by Malik and Nafiz (1933) as 41 mm, and the length of the largest m3, which is similar to the Yulafli teeth, is 20.5 mm ( MNHNP).

Dorcatherium puyhauberti Arambourg and Piveteau, 1929 , from the Turolian of Northern Greece is slightly smaller (lengths of m3s: 17–18 mm), and further differs by the peculiar morphology of its lower molars, in which the postero−labial wing of the metaconid curves labially to fuse with the protoconid, while the entoconid remains more lingual.

Thus, the Yulafli material differs from the Turolian species of the same area, and we prefer to compare it to the species most commonly mentioned in these levels, D. jourdani , first described from the Vallesian of France ( Depéret 1887), keeping in mind that this identification is provisional, as the systematics of the late (and middle) Miocene European Dorcatherium is still confused.