Late Miocene large mammals from Mahmutgazi, Denizli province, Western Turkey.

Denis Geraads (1)

1 CR2P - Centre de Recherche en Paléontologie - Paris

The upper Miocene locality of Mahmutgazi in Western Turkey was excavated in the 70s by a German team, but most of its large mammals had never been studied. The collection housed in the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde, Karlsruhe, contains, besides previously published groups, large samples of Giraffidae (Samotherium), Rhinocerotidae (including a nice complete skull of Ceratotherium neumayri), and Equidae, as well as some Chalicotheriidae (Ancylotherium) and Bovidae (Boselaphini), which are studied here. Three fossiliferous spots, Ma1, Ma2, and Ma3 have been recognized but I regard the first two, and probably also the third one, as contemporaneous. Although the fossil assemblage certainly does not reflect the full original taxonomic diversity, tentative biochronological conclusions can be proposed: the site is probably older than Şerefköy, Akkaşdağı, and the 'Dominant Fossil Assemblage' of Samos, but definitely younger than the early part of the Samos sequence.

Keywords: Mammalia; Neogene; Turkey; biochronology

Domains: Archaeology and Prehistory; Environmental studies

Denis Geraads. Late Miocene large mammals from Mahmutgazi, Denizli province, Western Turkey. . Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen, 2017, 284 (3), pp.241-257. ⟨10.1127/njgpa/2017/0661⟩. ⟨halshs-01794188⟩