Isolated teeth of a lesser short-nosed fruit bat
Cynopterus
brachyotis
(Müller, 1838), a fulvous fruit bat
Rousettus
leschenaultii
(Desmarest, 1820), and a dawn bat
Eonycteris
spelaea
(Dobson, 1871) ...are described from the Middle Pleistocene Tham Hai cave locality in northern Vietnam (Lang Son Province). These are the first fossil findings of the Old World fruit bats in Vietnam. The Middle Pleistocene association of Pteropodidae from the Tham Hai locality may largely reflect the composition of species that roosted in local caves.
The extinct mountain long-eared bat
Plecotus macrobullaris sarmaticus
subsp. nov. is described on the base of jaw remains from the Lower Pleistocene of the Taurida cave in central Crimea. This is the ...first record of the genus
Plecotus
in the Lower Pleistocene of Russia and the first fossil find of
P. macrobullaris
Kuzyakin, 1965, documenting the early stage of the evolutionary history of the species.
The holotype of
Hapalodectes dux
Lopatin, 2001 from the Upper Paleocene of Mongolia (Tsagan-Khushu locality, Naran Bulak Formation, Zhigden Member) is a lower jaw with complete dentition, showing ...healed alveoli in place of the right P
3
. Examination of the holotype using X-ray microtomography revealed a rare dental anomaly previously unknown in fossil mammals, namely the presence of the inverted (positioned upside down and rotated lingual side labially) impacted premolar inside the dentary. The cause of this anomaly may be an aberration of a tooth bud location or an injury.
Hapalodectes paradux
sp. nov. (Hapalodectidae, Mesonychia) is described on the base of the dentary fragment with M
2
–M
3
from the Tsagan-Khushu locality in Mongolia (Upper Paleocene, Naran Bulak ...Formation, Zhigden Member). The M
2
and M
3
are approximately the same size, with a high protoconid, anteriorly displaced reduced metaconid, anterolingually directed protocristid, very deep posterior notch, narrow talonid, and distinct hypoconid, entoconid and hypoconulid. Based on dental characters, the new species is presumably related to the base of the lineage of
Hapalodectes
that dispersed to North America at the beginning of the Eocene. Tsagan-Khushu is the only known locality where two species of
Hapalodectes
co-occur (larger
H. dux
Lopatin, 2001 and smaller
H. paradux
sp. nov.).
Jaw fragments and isolated teeth of the mole shrew
Anourosorex andabata
sp. nov. are described from the Middle Pleistocene deposits of Tham Hai cave (Lang Son Province, northern Vietnam). This is the ...first fossil record of
Anourosorex
in Vietnam. The new species is characterized by medium size (as in Recent
A. squamipes
Milne-Edwards, 1872), a narrow apex of the coronoid process of the mandible and a weakly reduced (relatively long and wide) talonid of M
1
.
The isolated upper premolar P
4
of a multituberculate mammal is described from the new Early Cretaceous locality of Shavar-Ovoo in Mongolia (Övörkhangai aimag, Guchin-Us sum). It demonstrates the ...morphology and measurements typical of
Arginbaatar dmitrievae
Trofimov, 1980 (Arginbaataridae). This is the first record of
Arginbaatar
(and the Early Cretaceous multituberculates of Mongolia in general) outside of the Höövör valley.
A new northern serotine bat
Eptesicus nilssonii
varangus
subsp. nov. is described on the base of an incomplete skull and a mandibular fragment from the Lower Pleistocene deposits of the Taurida cave ...in the central Crimea. This is the earliest record of the species. The presence of
E. nilssonii
(Keyserling et Blasius, 1839) in the Early Pleistocene bat assemblage of the Taurida cave indicates that this species lived in the south of Eastern Europe before its spreading into Central and Southeastern Europe.
The cranial and mandibular remains of a large serotine bat
Eptesicus praeglacialis
Kormos, 1930 are described from the Lower Pleistocene deposits of the Taurida cave in the central Crimea. This is ...the first finding of the skull material of
E. praeglacialis
and the first record of the species in Crimea. Judging by the tooth wear stages, the remains of both young and adult specimens are present in the taphocenosis. The small mammal tooth marks on the bones (caused by eating the remnants of soft tissues) in the absence of signs of digestion, characterizing materials from the predatory bird pellets, indicate that the taphocenosis includes the remains of
E. praeglacialis
individuals that used the cave as a shelter and died there. This corresponds to the idea of appearance of hibernation in caves as a climatically determined ecological adaptation in some European forest-dwelling bats (including
Eptesicus
) at the Pliocene–Pleistocene transition.
A new extinct subspecies of the Mehely’s horseshoe bat,
Rhinolophus mehelyi scythotauricus
subsp. nov., is described on the base of an incomplete skull from the Lower Pleistocene deposits of the ...Taurida cave in the central Crimea. It is the largest member of the
R. euryale
group. In terms of the evolutionary level, it is intermediate between Plio-Pleistocene
R. mehelyi birzebbugensis
Storch, 1974 and recent members of the species, but its large size and relatively narrow upper molars may indicate belonging to a separate phylogenetic lineage within
R. mehelyi
Matschie, 1901.
R. mehelyi scythotauricus
subsp. nov. is the first fossil record of the species in the Crimea; it is also one of the northernmost finds of
R. mehelyi
.
Tooth marks preserved on a dentary fragment of eutriconodontan
Gobiconodon borissiaki
Trofimov, 1978 from the Early Cretaceous Zuun-Höövör locality in northern Gobi Desert (Övörkhangai aimag, ...Mongolia) are described. It is most probably that these traces were left by incisors of the small gnawing mammals, namely multituberculates. This is the first finding of Cretaceous mammalian tooth marks in Asia and the earliest evidence of scavenging of multituberculates.
