Gregg F Gunnell

Duke University | DU · Duke Lemur Center

Late Cretaceous and Paleocene strata are exposed in the Lower Syr-Dar'ya Rise in the northeastern Aral Sea region, Kazakhstan. Fossiliferous horizons are present in the Kankazgan, Bostobe, and Akzhar Phosphorite formations. The Kankazgan Formation, exposed at Tyul'kili and Shakh-Shakh, contains a diverse coastal and coastal-marine fauna including g...

Kordikova, E.G., Shilin P.V., Gunnell G.F. & Polly P.D. 1999. Biotic change in the Turonian-Campanian of the Northeast Aral sea region, South Kazakhstan. - Abstracts VII Intern. Symposium on Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems, p. 33; Buenos Aires. Abstract. The Late Cretaceous of Kazakhstan is characterized by a diversity of reptiles representing seve...

FIRST KNOWN OCCURRENCE OF VARANOID AND SCINCOMORPH LIZARDS IN THE UPPER CRETACEOUS OF SOUTH-WESTERN KAZAKHSTAN. Elena G. KORDIKOVA, Vladimir R. ALIFANOV, Paul D. POLLY and Gregg F. GUNNELL. KEY WORDS: Scincomorpha, Varanidae, Upper Cretaceous, Kazakstan, paleozoogeography. The 1995 field season has yielded a new collection of vertebrate faunas, do...

Kordikova, E.G., Kurzanov, S.M. & Gunnell, G.F. 1997. Unusual claw dinosaur phalanxes from the Upper Cretaceous of the North-Eastern Aral Sea region, Kazakhstan. - J. of Morphology, 1997, 232, 3: 278. Abstract. Among various teeth and postcranial bones of dinosaur faunas found in the Bostobe Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Santonian-Campanian) of the...

The Microsyopidae are extinct mammals from the late Paleocene–late Eocene of North America and the late Paleocene of Europe. While results from phylogenetic analyses support euarchontan affinities, specific relationships of microsyopids to other plesiadapiforms (plausible stem primates), Euprimates (crown primates), Scandentia (treeshrews), and Der...

The fact that apes and monkeys have some human‐like qualities has been recognized by Western scholars since at least the time of ancient Greece, and the similarities were certainly evident long before then to anyone who had ever encountered an “anthropoid” primate. During the centuries between the time of Aristotle and Darwin, scholars documented n...

The origin of anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes, humans) is one of the most controversial issues in paleoanthropology. Living anthropoids are united by several morphological features, the most important of which is that the eye sits in a fully closed bony socket, reflecting a key shared innovation of the group—that is, an emphasis on vision over o...

In 1967 G.G. Simpson described three partial mandibles from early Miocene deposits in Kenya that he interpreted as belonging to a new strepsirrhine primate, Propotto. This interpretation was quickly challenged, with the assertion that Propotto was not a primate, but rather a pteropodid fruit bat. The latter interpretation has not been questioned fo...

Fossil bats from the Pliocene of Africa are extremely rare, especially in East Africa where meager records have been reported only from two localities in the Omo River Basin Shungura Formation and from a scattering of localities in the Afar Depression, both in Ethiopia. Here we report on a diverse assemblage of bats from Kanapoi in the Turkana Basi...

Caenopithecine adapiform primates are currently represented by two genera from the late Eocene of Egypt (Afradapis and Aframonius) and one from the middle Eocene of Switzerland (Caenopithecus). All are somewhat anthropoid-like in several aspects of their dental and gnathic morphology, and are inferred to have been highly folivorous. Here we describ...

A new genus and species of fossil bat is described from New Zealand's only pre-Pleistocene Cenozoic terrestrial fauna, the early Miocene St Bathans Fauna of Central Otago, South Island. Bayesian total evidence phylogenetic analysis places this new Southern Hemisphere taxon among the burrowing bats (mystacinids) of New Zealand and Australia, althoug...

A new specimen, referred to the notharctid primate Notharctus tenebrosus, is described from the middle Eocene of eastern Nevada. The material consists of the upper and lower jaws with most tooth loci represented, including rare representation of relatively unworn upper incisors. The completeness of the specimen permits a restoration of the spatial...

We investigated dental homologies, development, and growth in living and fossil hyracoids and tested if hyracoids and other mammals show correlations between eruption patterns, gestation time, and age at maturity. Unlike living species, fossil hyracoids simultaneously possess replaced P1 and canine teeth. Fossil species also have shorter crowns, an...

The Bridger Formation is restricted to the Green River Basin in southwest Wyoming, and the Uinta and Duchesne River Formations are located in the Uinta Basin in Utah. These three rock units and their diverse fossil assemblages are of great scientific importance and historic interest to vertebrate paleontologists. Notably, they are also the stratoty...

We investigated dental homologies, development, and growth in living and fossil hyracoids, and tested if hyracoids and other mammals show correlations between eruption patterns, gestation time, and age at maturity. Unlike living species, fossil hyracoids simultaneously possess replaced P1 and canine teeth. Fossil species also have shorter crowns, a...

Omomyids were small-bodied, tarsier-like primates that lived on the northern continents between 56 and 37 million years ago (Ma). They represent the earliest known definitive primates in the fossil record, appearing slightly earlier than members of the other large Eocene primate radiation, Adapiformes. Both of these groups, together with extant cro...

The bat genus Myotis is represented by 120+ living species and 40+ extinct species and is found on every continent except Antarctica. The time of divergence of Myotis has been contentious as has the time and place of origin of its encompassing group the Vespertilionidae, the most diverse (450+ species) and widely distributed extant bat family. Foss...

First appearance data of placental mammals in the fossil record. (XLSX)

Classification of species employed in phylogenetic analysis. (DOCX)

Taxon-character matrix utilized in phylogenetic analysis in NEXUS format. (NEX)

List of comparative specimens used during this study. (DOCX)

Taxon-character matrix utilized in phylogenetic analysis in TNT format. (TNT)

Paleontological field work in the Fayum Depression of Egypt has produced a remarkable diversity of fossil anthropoids, and this, combined with advances in genetic analyses of living anthropoids, has led to establishment of a temporal and phylogenetic framework for anthropoids that is achieving some degree of consensus. Less well understood are the...

The Bridger Formation is restricted to the Green River Basin in southwest Wyoming, and the Uinta and Duchesne River Formations are located in the Uinta Basin in Utah. These three rock units and their diverse fossil assemblages are of great scientific importance and historic interest to vertebrate paleontologists. Notably, they are also the stratoty...

Advancement of understanding in paleontology and biology has always been hindered by difficulty in accessing comparative data. With current and burgeoning technology, the severity of this hindrance can be substantially reduced. Researchers and museum personnel generating three-dimensional (3-D) digital models of museum specimens can archive them us...

The Bridger Formation is restricted to the Green River Basin in southwest Wyoming, and the Uinta and Duchesne River Formations are located in the Uinta Basin in Utah. These three rock units and their diverse fossil assemblages are of great scientific importance and historic interest to vertebrate paleontologists. Notably, they are also the stratoty...

Anthracotheriidae has long been recognized as an extinct family of artiodactyls that likely originated in the middle Eocene in Asia, and by the late Eocene and early Oligocene had diversified broadly throughout Africa, Eurasia, and North America. In the Fayum Depression, Egypt, anthracotheres appear to be absent from locality BQ-2 (~37 Ma) as well...

Sexual dimorphism and intrasexual competition between males is hypothesized to have appeared early in primate evolution, based on inferred canine dimorphism in the most basal adapiform, Cantius torresi and its later occurring notharctine relatives. Previous studies assessing canine dimorphism in notharctines have only made comparisons with a limite...

Body mass prediction is a frequent goal of paleontologists since body mass covaries with many aspects of a species' ecology. For example, niche partitioning by body mass (as predicted from tooth size) is often invoked in mammalian paleocommunities. However, tooth size can vary independent of body mass, and this variation has important ecological im...

Paleogene anthracotheres are poorly documented from Afro-Arabian localities. This is due, in large part, to the fragmentary nature of the specimens that have been described. However, sediments in the Jebel Qatrani Formation, Fayum Depression, Egypt, preserve the richest anthracothere assemblage in all of Afro-Arabia. Unlike other samples, the Fayum...

Species of the extinct genus Hyaenodon were among the largest carnivorous mammals from the Late Eocene through Early Miocene in North America, Europe and Asia. The origin, phylogeny and palaeobiology of Hyaenodonta are still ambiguous. Most previous studies focused on teeth and dental function in these highly adapted species, which might be influen...

Fieldwork conducted in the Wasatch Formation in and around Fossil Butte has yielded a diverse assemblage of early Eocene vertebrates. Fossil vertebrates are distributed through three discrete stratigraphic intervals within the uppermost 180 m of the main body of the Wasatch Formation underlying the Green River Formation. These assemblages were deri...

Primate species typically differ from other mammals in having bony canals that enclose the branches of the internal carotid artery (ICA) as they pass through the middle ear. The presence and relative size of these canals varies among major primate clades. As a result, differences in the anatomy of the canals for the promontorial and stapedial branc...

Recent work on new anthracothere (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) specimens from the Jebel Qatrani Formation, early Oligocene, Fayum, Egypt, has revealed the presence of a new genus. Nabotherium new genus is described on the basis of a partial skull, several mandibular and maxillary specimens, and isolated teeth. The new genus exhibits a distinctive combin...

http://morphosource.org/index.php/Detail/MediaDetail/Show/media_file_id/13185

A new fossil from the Late Eocene BQ-2 locality in the Birket Qarun Formation in the Fayum Depression of northern Egypt (dated to similar to 37 mybp) does not fit within the diagnosis of any previously described family of bats from Africa or any other continent. Known from a partial maxilla, this taxon has dilambdodont tribosphenic molars with a we...

Over the course of the last four decades, regular expeditions to the Fayum Depression of northern Egypt led by Elwyn Simons resulted in the recovery of a large and important sample of early fossil primates that are now held in the collections of the Egyptian Geological Museum and the Duke Lemur Center Division of Fossil Primates. Many of these foss...

Sexual dimorphism in body and canine size is a feature of many extant anthropoids, but is largely absent in strepsirrhines. Therefore it is surprising that early adapiform primates – generally considered to be strepsirrhines with lemur-like morphology – have been described as having highly dimorphic canines. Previous studies have not compare observ...

Borings in fossil turtle shells collected from the lowermost beds of the early Eocene Cathedral Bluffs Tongue of the Wasatch Formation in the northwestern part of the Green River Basin near South Pass, Wyoming, are herein described. Individual turtle shells in the study area are characterized by as few as one or two and as many as >100 borings. The...

Khasm El-Raqaba (KER) (28.451°N, 31.834°E) is a large commercial limestone quarry in Egypt's Eastern Desert. The site is best known for cetacean fossils recovered from middle Eocene deposits, but remains of some geologically younger, small fossil vertebrates representing snakes, rodents and bats, have been recovered from karst fissure-fill deposits...

Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania is most famous for producing some of the first discoveries of fossil hominins in East Africa. Zinjanthropus (= Paranthropus) boisei was initially discovered in 1959 from Olduvai Bed I. During screen-washing operations to search for more hominin material at Olduvai, an associated faunal assemblage was accumulated including...

Although variation in cranial arterial presence, route and development has been shown to provide indications of phylogenetic relationship in primates, information on relative area of the promontorial and stapedial bony canals has never been comprehensively quantified. Among fossil euprimates, some genera (notably Mahgarita, Notharctus, and Rooneyia...

The genus Hyaenodon was present in North America, Europe, and Asia from the late Eocene until the early Miocene. It was one of the most successful predators of its time. Despite the fact that much of the anatomy of Hyaenodon has been previously studied and documented, the systematic position of this genus within Hyaenodonta remains unclear. Details...

Fossil fishes were first collected from deposits of the Sangkarewang Formation of the Ombilin Basin in Sumatra, Indonesia, in the 1870s, but a comprehensive study of these fishes was not published until almost 50 years later. New material from these deposits was collected in 2009, which included a small anabantoid fish. This fish is not conspecific...

A new early Eocene bat species is described from the Paris Basin locality of Pourcy (Marne), which is thought to represent either MP7 (early Ypresian; earliest Eocene) or MP8+9 (middle Ypresian; later early Eocene) in the European Paleogene mammal chronostratigraphic scale. It is the first bat described from the Pourcy locality, and one of the worl...

Stratigraphic and paleoecological distribution of anthracotheres in the Fayum, Egypt

New specimens of the large anthracothere Bothriogenys andrewsi from Quarry L-75, and from another unnumbered locality are described. Both of these localities are near the top of the Jebel Qatrani Formation, Fayum, Egypt, and these specimens document the first definitive stratigraphic occurrence of B. andrewsi. The provenience of previous material a...

sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in the biological, ecologi...

The early Miocene site of Wadi Moghra, Qattara Depression, Egypt, is important for interpreting anthracothere (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) evolution, because the Moghra sediments preserve a higher diversity of anthracotheres than any other pene-contemporaneous site. New specimens from Moghra are described and form the basis for the systematic revision...

Mechanisms governing taxon replacement and subsequent radiation remain little understood. We examine possible forcing factors in a turnover of subfamily dominance seen within the fossil record of green lacewings (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae), a common, cosmopolitan, nocturnally active insect family. Analyses indicate that Nothochrysinae dominated the f...

Presence, route, and development of cranial arterial pathways have been shown to provide indications of relative ancestry and relationships in primates even though canal size does not necessarily correlate with artery size. Information on relative area of the promontorial and stapedial bony canals has never been comprehensively quantified for stati...

Significance Mammalian extinction during the past several hundred thousand years has been a major focus for evolutionary biologists, geologists, and archaeologists, often being linked to climate change and human overhunting. Until relatively recently, study has been largely restricted to the Americas, Europe, and Australasia. We present the oldest...

Myzopodidae is a family of bats today represented by two extant species of the genus Myzopoda that are restricted to the island of Madagascar. These bats possess uniquely derived adhesive pads on their thumbs and ankles that they use for clinging to smooth roosting surfaces. Only one fossil myzopodid has been reported previously, a humerus from Ple...

A fossilized cetacean vertebra was discovered within the inner section of the Padre Nuestro cave system in the summer of 2013. Padre Nuestro is a complex of freshwater caves and tunnels in Parque Nacional del Este of the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea. The subaquatic complex has produced fossils from several mam...

Abstract- Over the course of field work in West Sumatra, the known Paleogene faunal record have progressively added. Initially only fish fossils were found during a reconnaissance trip in 2007. In 2009, extensive fieldwork was conducted and large fish fossil collections were amassed, established the fact that crocodiles could be found in the Sangka...

-