Year: 1993
Type: article
Abstract: A new species of early Eocene omomyid, Teilhardina brandti, is described, based on an isolated but well preserved M,.The specimen comes from basal Wasatchian zone Wa-0 in the northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, the zone that marks the beginning of Eocene time in the North American succession of land-mammal ages and zones.Stratigraphic superposition and mammalian faunal correlation indicate that T. brandti is older than all previously known North American species of Teilhardina, and suggest that it is at least as old as the known European species.Measurements show T. brandti to have had a relatively narrow M,, as is characteristic of contemporaneous or later European T. belgica.M, is conspicuously narrower than later Teilhardina found in North America, lying outside the range of a shape quotient calculated from measurements of the latter.The new species is significantly larger than European T. belgica, lying outside the range of M, size measured in the type sample from Dormaal.Overlap in shape, but not size, with European T. belgica, and overlap in size, but not shape, with North American T. americana means T. brandti is intermediate morphologically.It links lineages on both continents, and may represent the common ancestor of both.Adapidae and Omomyidae are not known in Paleocene faunas of North America, and this new discovery confirms that both families appeared together, probably as immigrants, at the beginning of Eocene time.
Author: Philip D. Gingerich
Language: English
Subfield: Paleontology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W128308102