Phiomia

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Phiomia
Phiomia serridens skull in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris

Phiomia serridens skull in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris

Temporal occurrence
Oligocene
37.2 to 23.03 million years
Locations
Systematics
Afrotheria
Paenungulata
Tethytheria
Russell animals (Proboscidea)
Phiomiidae
Phiomia
Scientific name of the  family
Phiomiidae
Kalandadze & Rautian , 1992
Scientific name of the  genus
Phiomia
Andrews & Beadnell , 1902

Phiomia is an extinct genus of proboscis and, after Moeritherium, represents a further step in the evolution of this mammal order to today's elephants . Thisanimal, which livedin the Oligocene around 35 million years ago,lived like its ancestor on the banks of lakes and rivers and fed on aquatic plants . With a shoulder height of about 1.40 meters, it was slightly larger than Moeritherium and stood on relatively high legs. It is possible that the animal already had a well-developed trunk , which can be concluded from the large nasal opening and the reduced nasal bone.

Due to the further reduction in the number of teeth and the remodeling of the molars, the dentition was already much more modern than in the earlier proboscis. However, all teeth were functioning at the same time, which means that the animal still had the vertical change of teeth and was thus clearly different from the later proboscis. The dental formula was: . The molars had a lophodontic tooth structure. The last premolar had two transverse ridges, while all molars had three (trilophodont). The incisors were tusks rebuilt. Here had phiomia each one tusk per pine bough. They initially had a round cross-section at the alveoli and gradually narrowed towards the tip with an oval cross-section. They showed a clearly downward curvature and reached a length of sometimes over 45 cm. The lower tusks were much shorter and more straight in shape.

Phiomia one of the rich fossil vertebrate finds that in the Fayyum region in Egypt were discovered. The trilophodonte structure of the molars places the proboscis genus in the Elephantiformes. It is a sister clade to Palaeomastodon . Among the descendants of Phiomia are the gomphotheria and later the real elephants with the mammoths and the elephant species living today. Palaeomastodon evolved into the mammutids .

Today two types of phiomia are recognized:

  • Phiomia major Sanders, Kappelman & Rasmussen 2004
  • Phiomia serridens Andrews & Beadnell 1902

The first scientific description of Phiomia comes from Charles William Andrews and Hugh John Llewellyn Beadnell in 1902. The basis for this was a lower and upper jaw fragment, on which the tusks were still preserved. The finds came from El Fayum. Due to the special characteristics of the tusks, both authors suspected that the fossils were remnants of a representative of the Creodonta . Just four years later, Andrews referred to the fossils of Fayum Phiomia in his catalog of the trunk animals.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jan van der Made: The evolution of the elephants and their relatives in the context of a changing climate and geography. In: Harald Meller (Hrsg.): Elefantenreich - Eine Fossilwelt in Europa. Halle / Saale, 2010, pp. 340-360
  2. ^ A b William Sanders, John Kappelmann and D. Tab Rasmussen: New large-bodied mammals from the late Oligocene site of Chilga, Ethiopia. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 49 (3), 2004, pp. 365-392
  3. ↑ Jehezekel Shoshani, Robert C. Walter, Michael Abraha, soap Berhe, Pascal Tassy, William J. Sander, Gary H. Marchant, Yosief Libsekal, Tesfalidet Ghirmai and Dietmar Zinner: A proboscidean from the late Oligocene of Eritrea, a '' missing link '' between early Elephantiformes and Elephantimorpha, and biogeographic implications. PNAS 103 (46), 2006, pp. 17296-17301
  4. ^ William Sanders, Emmanuel Gheerbrant, John M. Harris, Haruo Saegusa and Cyrille Delmer: Proboscidea. In: Lars Werdelin and William Joseph Sanders (eds.): Cenozoic Mammals of Africa. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2010, pp. 161-251
  5. ^ Charles William Andrews and Hugh John Llewellyn Beadnell: A preliminary note on some new mammals from the Upper Eocene of Egypt. Survey Department, Public Works Ministry, Cairo, 1902, pp. 1-9
  6. ^ Charles W. Andrews: A descriptive catalog of the Tertiary Vertebrata of the Fayum, Egypt. London, 1907, pp. 1–324 (pp. 169–171)

Web links

Commons : Phiomia  - collection of images, videos and audio files