A new species of dog from the Early Pleistocene site of Venta Micena (Orce, Baza Basin, Spain)

Abstract

The site of Venta Micena (Orce, Spain), c. 1.6 Ma, preserves one the best paleontological records of the early Pleistocene large mammals fauna in Europe. Here we describe the specimens of the genus Canis Linnaeus, 1758 in the context of the late Villafranchian and Epivillafranchian fossil dogs from Eurasia. Anatomical and metric data suggest that the Venta Micena Canis form differs from the classical records of Canis etruscus Forsyth Major, 1877 and Canis arnensis Del Campana, 1913, and that it forms part of the younger Canis mosbachensis Soergel (1925) lineage, also recorded in two slightly younger sites of the Orce site complex, Barranco León and Fuente Nueva-3, dated to c. 1.4 Ma. The anatomy of the Venta Micena fossil material shows features that resemble the Canis forms from the Caucasian site of Dmanisi, dated to 1.8 Ma, and Canis ex gr. C. mosbachensis. Nevertheless, dental peculiarities support the creation of a new chrono-species, Canis orcensis n. sp., from the town of Orce. Morphological and paleoecological data suggest that this species probably consumed more vertebrate flesh than other similar sized early Pleistocene canids (i.e., a trend to hypercarnivory), which had more omnivorous dietary habits.

The Facial Reconstruction of a Mesolithic Dog, Muge, Portugal

“…A review of the literature relative to dog reconstruction shows a manual reconstruction of two extinct prehistoric dog morphotypes-the wool dog and a village/hunting dog from the New World (Crockford and Pye, 1997) [19]. More recently, the reconstructionartwork-of an extinct species of wolf, Canis orcensis (from Early Pleistocene), was also published (Martinez-Navarro et al, 2021) [20]. Other approaches, such as sculpture or virtual reconstructions, have also been employed.…”

New carnivoran remains from the Early Pleistocene Shanshenmiaozui site in Nihewan Basin, northern China

“…It is worth mentioning that the designation of Canis (Xenocyon) was a useful way to acknowledge the peculiarity of those Plio-Pleistocene taxa with extreme hypercarnivorous characteristics in the genus Canis, and the group was re-defined to include the following taxa: C. and Spassov, 2022). In addition, the recently established species Canis orcensis also is a hypercarnivorous type (Martínez-Navarro et al, 2021). This rather derived hypercarnivorous species mentioned above had an East Asian origin .…”

Déjà vu: on the use of meat resources by sabretooth cats, hominins, and hyaenas in the Early Pleistocene site of Fuente Nueva 3 (Guadix-Baza Depression, SE Spain)

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