BACKGROUND Mammalian fossils from the Eppelsheim Formation (Dinotheriensande) have been a benchmark for Neogene vertebrate palaeontology since 200 years. Worldwide famous sites like Eppelsheim serve as key localities for biochronologic, palaeobiologic, environmental, and mammal community studies. So far the formation is considered to be of early Late Miocene age (~9.5 Ma, Vallesian), representi...

Recent onshore New Jersey drilling (Ocean Drilling Program Leg 150X) provided excellent recovery of lower to middle Miocene sequences that we dated with Sr isotopic stratigraphy. Sequence boundaries correlate with deep-sea dO increases (inferred glacioeustatic lowerings), indicating a primary control by global sea-level change. Maryland Miocene outcrops appear to correlate with New Jersey seque...

Deep-time perspectives in macroecology are essential with regard to understanding the impact of climate forcing on faunal communities. Using late Miocene rodent faunas (12 to 5 Ma) from two different biogeographical provinces from southwestern Europe, we asked whether the waxing and waning of faunas with dissimilar ecological affinities tracked climate in different ways. The latest middle Mioce...

Progressive changes are observed in both the composition of mammal faunas and vegetation during the Miocene epoch [24-5 mega-annum (Ma)]. These changes are usually interpreted as a response to climatic changes. In the traditional view, forests or woodlands gradually gave way to more open habitats, with grazing (grass-eating) ungulate (hoofed) mammal species replacing the browsing (leafy-vegetat...

Fourteen of the best sampled Oligo-Miocene local faunas from the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, north-western Queensland, Australia are analysed using classification and ordination techniques to identify potential mammalian palaeocommunities and palaeocommunity types. Abundance data for these faunas are used, for the first time, in conjunction with presence/absence data. An early Miocene Faun...

Primate hands display a major selective compromise between locomotion and manipulation. The thumb may or may not participate in locomotion, but it plays a central role in most manipulative activities. Understanding whether or not the last common ancestor of humans and Pan displayed extant-ape-like hand proportions (i.e., relatively long fingers and a short thumb) can be clarified by the analysi...

The present publication reports new discoveries of Oligocene and early Miocene aplodontid rodents from the Taatsiin Gol area (Valley of Lakes) in Mongolia. The fossil aplodontids recovered in this area are mainly composed of dental remains, some fragmentary jaws plus one partially preserved skull. Aplodontid rodents have been found from the early Oligocene (local biozone A) to the early middle ...

Global and regional environmental changes have influenced the evolutionary processes of hominoid primates, particularly during the Miocene. Recently, a new Lufengpithecus cf. lufengensis hominoid fossil with a late Miocene age of ~6.2 Ma was discovered in the Shuitangba (STB) section of the Zhaotong Basin in Yunnan on the southeast margin of the Tibetan Plateau. To understand the relationship b...

[1] We use paleomagnetic data from Tertiary volcanic rocks to address the rates and timing of vertical‐axis block rotations across the central Sierra Nevada‐Walker Lane transition in the Bodie Hills, California/Nevada. Samples from the Upper Miocene (∼9 Ma) Eureka Valley Tuff suggest clockwise vertical‐axis block rotations between NE‐striking left‐lateral faults in the Bridgeport and Mono Basin...

The phylogenetic position of the giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca (Carnivora: Ursidae: Ailuropodinae), has been one of the most hotly debated topics by mammalian biologists and paleontologists during the last century. Based on molecular data, it is currently recognized as a true ursid, sister-taxon of the remaining extant bears, from which it would have diverged by the Early Miocene. However...