Muridae from the late Miocene site of Venta del Moro (Eastern Spain)

First evidence of endemic Murinae (Rodentia, Mammalia) in the early Pliocene of the Balearic Islands (western Mediterranean)

“…Paraethomys belmezensis from the Belmez-1 locality (southern Iberian Peninsula; Castillo Ruiz, 1992), a species probably also derived from P. meini, is slightly larger than the latter and clearly smaller than P. abaigari. The African P. lissasfensis from the upper Miocene, apparently related to the Iberian Paraethomys (Geraads 1998), has a molar size slightly larger than the specimens of P. meini from Venta del Moro (Mansino et al 2017a). This locality contains one of the smallest sized populations of P. meini.…”

“…In P. meini the posterior spur is also more developed on the t3, although it is variable across time. In the late Turolian P. meini specimens from Venta del Moro and SIF-61, it is not markedly developed (Mansino et al 2017a;. On the other hand, this spur is more developed in the latest Turolian specimens from the Granada Basin, whereas the earliest Ruscinian P. meini presents a more reduced t3 (García-Alix et al 2008).…”

“…nov. presents a significantly larger size than P. meini across practically all its evolutionary lineage, with the exception of the late Turolian and the late Ruscinian P. meini populations, with which there is some size overlap ( fig. 5 in Mansino et al 2017a). The size of the m1 of P. balearicus sp.…”

Late Miocene remains from Venta del Moro (Iberian Peninsula) provide further insights on the dispersal of crocodiles across the late Miocene Tethys

“…The faunal list includes 48 species of mammals, of which nine have VM as their type locality. VM also records the first appearance datum (FAD) in Europe for the ursoid Agriotherium (Morales, 1984;Abella et al, 2014Abella et al, , 2019, the camel Paracamelus (Morales et al, 1980;Morales, 1984;Pickford et al, 1993Pickford et al, , 1995van der Made and Morales, 1999), and the murid Paraethomys (Gibert et al, 2013;Mansino et al, 2017). For additional information on the faunal Morales (1984), Montoya et al (2006Montoya et al ( , 2009Montoya et al ( , 2011, Pesquero et al (2007), Salesa et al (2010), Alba et al (2015), Mansino et al (2014Mansino et al ( , 2015aMansino et al ( , 2017Mansino et al ( , 2018, and Crespo et al (2018).…”

“…This time span is characterized by important dispersal events of multiple mammalian taxa into western Europe (Pickford and Morales, 1994;Agustí et al, 2006;van der Made et al, 2006;Minwer-Bararat et al, 2009;Gibert et al, 2013;Mansino et al, 2015b;García-Alix et al, 2016;Minwer-Barakat et al, 2018), mainly from Asia (camels, canids, colobines, ursoids), but also from Africa (hippos, crocodiles). VM also records other taxa of African affinities, such as the murid rodent Paraethomis meini Michaux, 1969 and the chiropteran Myotis podlesicensis Crespo et al, 2018(Mansino et al, 2017Crespo et al, 2018).…”