Agriotherium insigne (Gervais, 1859)

Montoya, Plinio, Ginsburg, Léonard, Alberdi, María Teresa, Made, Jan Van Der, Morales, Jorge & Soria, María Dolores, 2006, Fossil large mammals from the early Pliocene locality of Alcoy (Spain) and their importance in biostratigraphy, Geodiversitas 28 (1), pp. 137-173 : 137-173

Agriotherium insigne (Gervais, 1859)

MATERIAL EXAMINED. — Fragment of a left maxilla with the alveolus of the first three premolars, the complete upper carnassial and an anterior fragment of the M1 ( MNHN) ( Gervais 1853: pl. IV, fig. 3; 1859a: pl. 81, fig. 2). Unfortunately, the original specimen, as well as other materials from the Alcoy mine, are lost. We could study a cast deposited in the MNHN.

MEASUREMENTS. — See Appendix: Table 1.

DESCRIPTION

The P4 is the only complete tooth preserved in the maxilla. It is a robust tooth, with a very well developed parastyle that shows a single internal edge continued in the lingual cingulum. The protocone is simple and consists of a backwards directed conical cusp, surrounded by a well marked basal cingulum. At the base of the metastyle is a strong lingual cingulum and another weaker one in the labial side.

DISCUSSION

The upper carnassial from Alcoy shows a morphology that can be considered typical of Agriotherium , a genus present in Europe from the latest Miocene (MN13) of Venta del Moro ( Morales & Aguirre 1976; Morales 1984) until the upper Pliocene (MN16) of Vialette ( Helbing 1932). When comparing with Indarctos atticus (Weithofer, 1888) , it can be noticed that the P4 of this species generally presents a less developed parastyle, even relatively very reduced in some specimens from Concud ( Crusafont 1962; Montoya et al. 2001). In addition, this parastyle shows two edges (lingual and labial) in Indarctos atticus , whereas the specimen from Alcoy only shows a lingual edge, a typical characteristic of Agriotherium ( Petter & Thomas 1986) . Moreover and in contrast to the studied specimen, the protocone in I. atticus is nearly always more or less bifurcated ( Montoya et al. 2001).

The general morphology of the P4 studied in this work is very similar to that of the specimens of A. palaeindicum ( Lydekker, 1884) , A. sivalense (Falconer & Cautley, 1836) and A. insigne figured by Gervais (1859a: pl. 81), Lydekker (1884: pl. 30) and Frick (1926), and also to most P4 of A. africanum Hendey, 1972 (described by Hendey (1972, 1980). Its size falls within the range of the minimal values of A. africanum , and is very similar to A. insigne and A. sivalense . However, it is clearly far from a non-published tooth of A. roblesi Morales & Aguirre, 1976 from the latest Miocene (MN13) of Venta del Moro, which is a much larger and more robust tooth with a less individualized protocone. It also differs largely from A. intermedium Stach, 1957 from the lower Pliocene of Weze ( Stach 1957) and of Xiaoxian (Qiu & Schmidt-Kittler 1983), a relatively small Agriotherium ( Table 1; Fig. 2 ).

Although the taxonomical status of some of the species included in the genus has not been revised, the specimen from Alcoy can be assigned to Agriotherium insigne , described by Gervais (1859a: 27, 28, pl. 81, figs 3-7) and Viret (1939) from the lower Pliocene of Montpellier ( France).

Subfamily URSINAE Fischer de Waldheim, 1817

Figures

FIG. 2. — Bivariate plot of the P4 of Agriotherium insigne (Gervais, 1859) from Alcoy (cast MNHN), A. insigne from Montpellier (Gervais 1859b), A. roblesi Morales & Aguirre, 1976 from Venta del Moro (MGUV),A. palaeoindicum (Lydekker,1884) and A. sivalense (Falconer & Cautley,1836), A. intermedium Qiu & Schmidt-Kittler, 1983 and A. africanum Hendey,1972.Abbreviations:DAP, anteroposterior diameter; DT, transverse diameter.