Juan AbellaUniversity of Valencia | UV · Department of Geology
Juan Abella
PhD
About
152
Publications
65,801
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,278
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
March 2019 - March 2020
January 2017 - December 2018
June 2014 - December 2016
Publications
Publications (152)
The phylogenetic position of the giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca (Carnivora: Ursidae: Ailuropodinae), has been one of the most hotly debated topics by mammalian biologists and paleontologists during the last century. Based on molecular data, it is currently recognized as a true ursid, sister-taxon of the remaining extant bears, from which it wo...
The fossil bacula, or os penis, constitutes a rare subject of study due to its scarcity in the fossil record. In the present paper we describe five bacula attributed to the bear Indarctos arctoides Depéret, 1895 from the Batallones-3 site (Madrid Basin, Spain). Both the length and morphology of this fossil bacula enabled us to make interpretative a...
In the present study we analyse the diversity of the Superfamily Ursoidea during the Neogene of the Iberian Peninsula to further compare it with that of the Neogene of Western Europe to find the different associations of this group. The results indicate that both the diversity and the taxonomy amongst these two regions show important variations, th...
We describe cranial, mandibular, and dental remains of five individuals of the giant mustelid Eomellivora piveteaui Ozansoy, 1965, from the late Miocene (MN10) site of Cerro de los Batallones (Madrid, Spain)—the first complete cranial remains recorded for this species and the most complete remains of the genus. This new sample enables a review of t...
We investigate the relative development of the carnivoran radial sesamoids to untangle the evolution of this iconic structure. In the pandas (both giant and red), this ‘false thumb’ is known to perform a grasping role during bamboo feeding in both the red and giant pandas. An original locomotor role has been inferred for ailurids, but this remains...
Eomellivora es un mustélido de talla grande relacionado con el ratel actual (Mellivora capensis) que representa uno de los mustélidos gigantes más enigmáticos del Mioceno. Actualmente, se reconocen 6 especies provenientes de Eurasia y América del Norte, con un rango temporal que va desde finales del Mioceno medio hasta finales del Mioceno superior....
Extant giant pandas are among the most herbivorous forms of the order Carnivora, feeding mainly on hard plant material. The first steps of their evolutionary lineage are of particular interest for our understanding of the factors that led to this specialized niche. The present work deals with newly discovered dental material of the primitive ailuro...
The Late Miocene locality of Hammerschmiede has yielded an astonishing diversity of vertebrates, including 28 different carnivoran species. The main layers HAM 5 (11.62 Ma) and HAM 4 (11.44 Ma) have been found to host 21 and 17 carnivoran species, respectively. Herein we perform a guild structure analysis aiming to unravel their ecomorphological ro...
Carnivore mammals (Carnivora, Mammalia) constitute a significant component of the Spanish Neogene faunas, not so much due to their fossil abundance, which is generally low, but rather because of their high degree of taxonomic diversity. We assessed their evolutionary dynamics from the fossil record of Iberian carnivores using per-taxon rates of ori...
Hispanopithecus laietanus from the Late Miocene (9.8 Ma) of Can Llobateres 1 (CLL1; Vall es-Pened es Basin, NE Iberian Peninsula) represents one of the latest occurrences of fossil apes in Western mainland Europe, where they are last recorded at~9.5 Ma. The paleoenvironment of CLL1 is thus relevant for understanding the extinction of European homin...
Los anficiónidos son carnívoros arctoideos que aparecieron durante el Eoceno en la región holártica. En Europa, experimentaron una importante radiación evolutiva durante el Mioceno, dando lugar a algunas de las formas más típicas de la familia. En este trabajo se estudia el material de Amphicyonidae proveniente de varios yacimientos de la cuenca de...
Ammitocyon kainos, Morales et al, es un anficiónido hipercarnívoro del Vallesiense del Cerro de los Batallones, Madrid, España. A grandes rasgos posee una combinación de características anatómicas no presente en ningún otro representante del Orden Carnivora tanto actual como extinto. Por un lado, su dentición postcanina es uno de los modelos más hi...
El yacimiento del Mioceno Superior (MN13) de Venta del Moro, situado en la cuenca del Cabriel en Valencia (España) es la localidad de referencia para la edad de mamíferos Ventiense y su asociación de vertebrados posee una gran importancia. Es la localidad tipo de 9 especies de mamíferos y presenta una mezcla única de taxones, en la que abundan los...
Here, we describe and revise craniodental material from Langebaanweg ‘E’ Quarry (South Africa, early Pliocene, ∼5.2 Ma), which represents one of the largest and best-preserved collections of sabertooth felids from Mio-Pliocene deposits of Africa. Four taxa, including two new species, are recognized: Lokotunjailurus chinsamyae sp. nov., Adeilosmilus...
The Late Miocene locality of Hammerschmiede (Germany) has yielded an astonishing diversity of vertebrates, including 84 mammalian species and 28 different carnivorans among the four fossiliferous layers. In particular, the main layers HAM 4 (11.44 Ma) and HAM 5 (11.62 Ma) have been found to host 21 and 15 species, respectively. Rarefaction analysis...
Although the suid assemblages from the Miocene of the Vallès-Penedès Basin (NE Iberian Peninsula) are reasonably well known, taxonomic studies devoted to them have lagged behind in recent decades. We describe the unpublished suid dentognathic remains from the earliest Vallesian (MN9) of Creu de Conill 20 (CCN20; 11.18 Ma), which represents the Firs...
The systematic status of the large amphicyonids of the peri-Mediterranean area has been widely discussed, since the creation of the genus Megamphicyon Kuss 1965, until the present, in which most authors chose to include them in the genus Amphicyon Lartet, 1836, as Amphicyon giganteus (Ginsburg, 1999; Morlo, 2022). Although this problem has received...
The present study deals with new material of carnivorans (Mustelidae, Mephitidae, Ailuridae, Potamotheriinae and Viverridae) from the basal Tortonian (Late Miocene, late Astaracian) hominid-bearing locality of Hammerschmiede (Bavaria, Germany). The small carnivoran fauna includes 20 species belonging to nine different subfamilies (Guloninae, Lutrin...
The late Oligocene genus Proailurus is generally accepted as the earliest member of the family Felidae. Later on, during the Miocene four different felid species are traditionally recognized and included in the paraphyletic genus Pseudaelurus: P. quadridentatus, P. romieviensis, P. lorteti, and P. turnauensis. More recently various authors have ass...
Els Casots is one of the richest fossil vertebrate sites of the Vallès-Penedès Basin (Catalonia, Spain). It was
discovered in 1989 and excavated briefly during the 1990s, resulting in the recovery of thousands of remains
and the erection of several new mammal species. Excavations were resumed in 2018 and continue to date.
Here we provide updated re...
El búho listado, Asio clamator, es un ave Strigiforme con distribución Neotropical del sur de México al norte de Argentina. Sin embargo, el mayor conocimiento de su dieta viene del sur de la Amazonía de su distribución, mientras en Ecuador la información de su dieta es nula. El presente estudio describe el contenido de 72 egagrópilas colectados de...
El búho listado, Asio clamator, es un ave Strigiforme con distribución Neotropical del sur de México al norte de Argentina. Sin embargo, el mayor conocimiento de su dieta viene del sur de la Amazonía de su distribución, mientras en Ecuador la información de su dieta es nula. El presente estudio describe el contenido de 72 egagrópilas colectados de...
We report the finding of two partial specimens of Cryptolepas rhachianecti (Cirripedia, Coronulidae), a coronulid barnacle known only to inhabit the skin of gray whales ( Eschrichtius robustus ), in Pleistocene-aged sediments from the Canoa Basin, Ecuador. While the historical range of gray whales includes the North Pacific and North Atlantic, to o...
The Amphicyoninae of the early Miocene from the locality of Tuchořice, the Czech Republic, are represented by three species. Two of them are classified within the tribe Amphicyonini: Paludocyon bohemicus (scHlosser, 1899) as the type species of Paludocyon n. gen., and a large-sized amphicyonid determined as Megamphicyon carnutense (anTunes et Ginsb...
Carnivoran‐dominated fossil sites are scarce in the fossil record but provide precious information on the diversity and ecology of past carnivoran guilds. The Cerro de los Batallones sites host the oldest carnivoran‐dominated assemblages, with the highest carnivoran abundances observed in the fossil record. Batallones‐3 (Late Miocene, Madrid Basin,...
We describe two carnivoran coprolites found in the pseudokarst natural carnivore trap of Batallones-3, from the Late Miocene of Spain. The larger one, comprising multiple indistinguishable fragments of broken and corroded bones, indicates that the producer of the dropping might have been highly capable of crushing the softer parts of large bones. O...
Eomellivora is a large-bodied mellivorine mustelid genus widely distributed throughout Eurasia and North America during the late Miocene (MN9-MN13). Here, we report the oldest Eurasian material of Eomellivora based on a palate and two mandibular fragments from ACM/PTA-A2, a pre-Vallesian (11.21 Ma; latest MN7 +8) locality of Abocador de Can Mata (V...
In the present paper, we describe the craniodental remains of three individuals of an amphicyonid previously determined
as Thaumastocyon sp. from the late Miocene (c. 9.1 Ma) pseudokarstic site of Batallones-3. Dentognathic differences in
relation to other Thaumastocyoninae enable a new taxon, Ammitocyon kainos gen. et sp. nov., to be defined; it i...
Venta del Moro is a classical locality from the late Miocene (Ventian, MN13) of the Cabriel basin from Valencia (Spain). This site is the type locality of nine mammal species. Among them, is the camelid Paracamelus aguirrei, which was defined by its upper dentition, a lower third premolar (p3), and some postcranial remains. This genus, which is the...
The dispersal of Crocodylus from Africa to Europe during the Miocene is not well understood. A small collection of cranial fragments and postcranial elements from the latest Miocene (6.2 Ma) site of Venta del Moro (Valencia, Spain) have previously been referred to Crocodylus cf. C. checchiai Maccagno, 1947 without accompanying descriptions. Here we...
The white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is a top predator in the present-day marine coastal ecosystems. Modern populations of this species have been studied in Africa, Australia and the Pacific coast of North America. However, the record of extant white shark populations in the coasts of South America is scarce. The fossil record of the white shar...
The occurrence and diversity of elasmobranchs from the Oligocene–Miocene boundary from Tropical America is poorly known in comparison with the paleodiversity from younger Neogene intervals of the region. Here we describe a newelasmobranch assemblage from the rich fossil site of Montañita-Olón (Dos Bocas Formation, Santa Elena, Ecuador), where other...
We describe dentognathic remains of four individuals of the poorly known mustelid Circamustela Petter, 1967 from the late Miocene sites of Batallones-3 and 5 (MN10, Torrejon de Velasco, Madrid, Spain). These new fossils allow us to describe Circamustela peignei n. sp., a more primitive species than Circamustela dechaseauxi Petter, 1967 from Can Llo...
We describe new dental remains of the genus Iberictis (Carnivora: Mustelidae) from the late early Miocene of the Iberian Peninsula. The new fossils of Iberictis azanzae from Artesilla (16.5–16.3 Ma, MN4; Calatayud-Teruel Basin, Zaragoza, Spain) add important morphological information about this species. Material from another species, Iberictis bulo...
New Amphicyonidae fossil remains from the early Miocene site of Tuchořice (the Czech Republic) confirm the presence of a new Thaumastocyoninae taxon: Peignecyon felinoides n. gen. et n. sp. It is characterized by a peculiar combination of plesiomorphic and derived morphological traits. The new genus can be defined by a long and sharp mandible diast...
In this paper we describe Late Miocene (MN13) remains of the genus Indarctos Pilgrim, 1913 from the locality of Las Casiones (Teruel, Spain). Although the phylogenetic relationships of this genus are still controversial, the most recent phylogenetic analyses, based on cranial, mandibular and dental characters, include it in Ailuropodinae, thus maki...
In the present work a molar from the Aragonian site of Valdemoros 4A (MN5, local biozone Dd), situated near the locality of Villafeliche (Zaragoza) has been studied. In localities of the same area, such as Arroyo del Val, Artesilla, La Barranca y Ramblar 3B, several fossils attributed to the hemicyonids Hemicyon stehlini, Hemicyon sp. aff. Hemicyon...
Los restos fósiles del varano del yacimiento paleontológico de El Cerro de los Batallones
Monitor lizards (genus Varanus) inhabited Europe at least from the early Miocene to the Pleistocene. Their fossil record is limited to about 40 localities that have provided mostly isolated vertebrae. Due to the poor diagnostic value of these fossils, it was recently claimed that all the European species described prior to the 21st century are not...
List of references consulted to score characters for the phylogenetic analysis.
(PDF)
Matrix used in the phylogenetic analyses.
(NEX)
Lists of the apomorphies of V. marathonensis, of the synapomorphies of the clade including V. marathonensis and the subgenus Indovaranus, and of Varanus (based on analysis 1B).
(PDF)
List of extant comparative specimens of Varanus.
(PDF)
New characters added to the original list of Conrad et al. [11].
(PDF)
Results of the phylogenetic analysis 1A.
(PDF)
Results of the phylogenetic analysis 2A.
(PDF)
Un paseo por el pasado de la Península de Santa Elena:
cuatro años de descubrimientos paleontológicos.
Este trabajo resume las actividades realizadas en el campo de la paleontología desde Junio de 2014 a Diciembre de 2016 como Becario Prometeo en la UPSE y de Enero de 2017 a Noviembre de 2018 como docente en la UPSE. Es una invitación a un recorri...
Tanque Loma B2: Cuando la Brea no pudo atrapar a la megafauna.
Las trampas de brea constituyen uno de los sitios paleontológicos más importantes donde se pueden encontrar restos de megafauna fósiles.. Existen varios yacimientos de este tipo destacando, Rancho la Brea en Estados Unidos, Las Breas de San Felipe en Cuba, Orocual en Venezuela, Pitch L...
En este trabajo se presenta nueva información sobre los restos fósiles de osteíctios (restos craneales) y condríctios (restos de esqueleto postcraneal y dientes) de las Formaciones Canoa y Tablazo (Cantón Montecristi, Manabí). Los estudios publicados en los últimos años permitieron fechar los yacimientos como pertenecientes al Plioceno tardío – Ple...
Batallones-3 is one of the nine late Miocene mammalian sites found in the Batallones butte (Madrid basin, central Spain). Although the paleoartistic reconstructions of the site are detailed, a three-dimensional reconstruction of cave geomorphology would be very useful for future works. At Batallones-3, a total of 19,187 large-mammal remains have be...
The evolution and occurrence of fossil sea turtles at the Pacific margin of South America is poorly known and restricted to Neogene (Miocene/Pliocene) findings from the Pisco Formation, Peru. Here we report and describe the first record of Oligocene (late Oligocene, ∼24 Ma) Pan-Cheloniidae sea turtle remains of South America. The fossil material co...
The evolution and occurrence of fossil sea turtles at the Pacific margin of South America is poorly known and restricted to Neogene (Miocene) findings from Perú. Here we report and describe the first record of Paleogene (Late Oligocene, ~24 Ma) sea turtle remains. The fossil material corresponds to a single, isolated and well-preserved costal bone...
The evolution and occurrence of fossil sea turtles at the Pacific margin of South America is poorly known and restricted to Neogene (Miocene) findings from Perú. Here we report and describe the first record of Paleogene (Late Oligocene, ~24 Ma) sea turtle remains. The fossil material corresponds to a single, isolated and well-preserved costal bone...
A new small probable Oligocene dolphin from Ecuador represents a new genus and species, Urkudelphis chawpipacha. The new taxon is known from a single juvenile skull and earbones; it differs from other archaic dolphins in features including widely exposed frontals at the vertex, a dorsally wide open vomer at the mesorostral groove, and a strongly pr...
Cladistic matrix in nex format.
(NEX)
Cladistic matrix in tnt format.
(TNT)
Tree file of analysis 2.
(TRE)
Full 50% majority consensus tree of analysis 1.
(TIF)
Full single tree of analysis 2.
(TIF)
List of modifications for character list.
(DOCX)
Tree file of analysis 1.
(TRE)
Body restoration formula from Pyenson and Sponberg (2011).
(R)
Preliminary taphonomic study of Batallones-3 remains.
The rich fossiliferous locality of Rudabánya (Hungary) is dated to the Vallesian (late Miocene, MN 9). It contains several taxa of the order Carnivora. The aim of the present paper is to describe remains belonging to a new genus and species of Ursidae, Miomaci panonnicum. It is represented by upper and lower teeth which are compared to other Miocen...
Mustelids represent the most diverse living family of Carnivora, displaying a broad range of locomotor behaviors, including terrestrial, semi-fossorial, scansorial, arboreal and semi-aquatic. Moreover, mustelid body mass (BM) ranges between the 0.025 kg (Mustela nivalis) and 45 kg (Enhydra lutris), spanning three orders of magnitude. We analyzed 14...
We re-evaluated the Austrian material for Hadrictis fricki Pia, 1939, from the localities Wien XII-Altmannsdorf and Gaiselberg (MN9, Vallesian, Late Miocene), concluding that Hadrictis can be considered as a synonymy of Eomellivora Zdansky, 1924; we therefore named it as Eomellivora fricki. This species is one of the earliest representatives of the...
