Serdar Mayda

Ege University · Department of Biology

Since its discovery within a travertine quarry, the fragmentary cranium of the only known Turkish Homo erectus, the Kocabaş hominid, has led to conflicting biochronological estimations. First estimated to be ∼500 ka old, the partial skull presents a combination of archaic and evolved features that puts it as an intermediate specimen between the Dma...

La révision et l’étude de nouveaux fossiles de grands mammifères provenant des dépôts de travertins du bassin de Denizli ont permis de reconnaître les espèces suivantes : Archidiskodon meridionalis meridionalis, Stephanorhinus cf. etruscus, Equus cf. altidens s. l., E. cf. apolloniensis, Metacervoceros rhenanus, Cervalces (Libralces) ex gr. minor-g...

Terrestrial fossil records from the SW Anatolian basins are crucial both for regional correlations and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. By reassessing biostratigraphic constraints and incorporating new fossil data, we calibrated and reconstructed the late Neogene and Quaternary palaeoenvironments within a regional palaeogeographical framework....

The Dardanelles region has formed a key gateway connecting the Eastern Paratethys and the Aegean/Mediterranean since the late Miocene. Its sedimentary sequences contain crucial information about connectivity and tectonics but so far lack unambiguous age constraints. Only a few Miocene marine episodes have been documented and fossil assemblages are...

Spalacinae are an unusual component of the fossil record around the world with a limited geographical distribution. The revisited section of Afşar includes one of the richest collections of Spalacinae in Turkey. From Afşar 1, near the base of the section we recovered Pliospalax cf. macoveii while in Afşar 2, at the top of the section we distinguish...

This study introduces Hystrix aegeanensis n. sp., a new late Miocene (MN 12) porcupine species from Samos, Greece, and Karaağaç, Türkiye. This represents the fifth record of late Miocene Hystrix from Europe and Asia Minor. H. aegeanensis n. sp. exhibits a unique occlusal outline and pattern compared to those of all other late Miocene Hystrix specie...

Anadolu, Avrasya ve Afrika faunalarının paleocoğrafik tarihi boyunca özellikle karasal memelilerin evrimi için önemli bir kavşak rolü oynamıştır. Fosil atların kaydı ise evrimsel süreçlerin ve biyokronolojik korelasyonların değerlendirilmesine katkıda bulunarak kıtalararası yayılım desenlerinin izlenmesinde önemli bir yere sahiptir. Fosil Equidae ö...

The Çorakyerler fossil locality in Anatolia reveals unique faunal elements. This study introduces Hystrix kayae sp. nov., a new Late Miocene porcupine initially classified as Hystrix sp. Yavuz et al., 2018. This finding expands our knowledge of Late Miocene Anatolian porcupines, bringing the total number of known species to three. H. kayae sp. nov....

Porcupines, members of the Hystricidae family, represent a unique group of herbivorous mammals. This study details the identification of a newly discovered mandible fragment of Hystrix primigenia, along with a right cheek tooth series from the middle Turolian Kemiklitepe-A fossil locality. While Hystrix fossils are found in numerous localities, the...

Anatolian peninsula is a geographic land-bridge residing on one of the dispersal routes from Africa to the Near East into Europe. Its distinct geographic location enables it to host hominin groups and serves a pathway as a natural land-bridge allowing the migrations for the terrestrial biota throughout the time. Our leading aim was to discover new...

The Catalan locality of Can Llobateres 1 (early Vallesian, MN9) shows a remarkably rich diversity just prior to the mid-Vallesian crisis, including 23 species of Carnivora. Similarity maps using the Raup-Crick index and covering the Middle to Late Miocene (16–5.3 Ma) show that the origin of this carnivoran chronofauna lies to the north of the Iberi...

Fossil apes from the eastern Mediterranean are central to the debate on African ape and human (hominine) origins. Current research places them either as hominines, as hominins (humans and our fossil relatives) or as stem hominids, no more closely related to hominines than to pongines (orangutans and their fossil relatives). Here we show, based on o...

Fossil ‘ovibovin’ bovids are described from the Upper Miocene of Çorakyerler (north-central Anatolia). Two taxa have been recognized: the predominant Criotherium argalioides, known by several craniodental remains, and the less common Hezhengia? cf. inundata, documented by a few dentitions. A review of C. argalioides records from Samos and Kemiklite...

The aim of this review is, first of all, to summarize our knowledge on Miocene Moschidae and provide a helpful tool for the determination of moschids in Miocene faunas. Secondly, it gives an overview of our current knowledge on the spreading of Miocene Moschidae by characterizing the environmental conditions at key localities across Eurasia. Althou...

Foça Çöküntüsü’nün batı kenarında yer alan Kösedere ve Mordoğan alt havzalarındaki orta Miyosen tortullaşması, egemen gölsel Hisarcık formasyonu ile temsil edilir. Hisarcık formasyonu, erken Miyosen sonunda bölgeye yerleşen kalkalkalen karakterli volkanitler (Karaburun volkanitleri ve Foça tüfü) üzerinde uyumsuzlukla yer alır. Orta Miyosen havzalar...

The new micromammal site of Beydere 3 represents a typical Anatolian MN3 fauna in the high diversification and abundance of Eumyarion. Notably, two Eumyarion species are new; combined, they make up almost half of the assemblage. While Eumyarion beyderensis sp. nov. shows simple morphology in upper molars, Eumyarion aegeaniensis sp. nov. shows a mor...

The Lower-Upper Pleistocene sedimentary record of the Baklan Basin, a long-lived continental half-graben basin in SW Turkey, is characterized by shallow lacustrine and palustrine deposits. The paleoenvironmental changes recorded in the basin succession allow for a multiproxy approach in reconstructing the paleoclimatic, paleoecological, and paleobi...

The Eşendere Group, identified in the Mordoğan sub-basin on the western edge of the Foça Depression, consists of the alluvial Saip, palustrine Boyabağ and lacustrine Çukurcak limestone formations. The Eşendere Group unconformably overlies the lacustrine deposits of the middle Miocene Hisarcık Formation. The Saip Formation consisting of alluvial fan...

The Afşar section, situated in the Dombayova graben in western Turkey, is one of the key localities for the study of the Pliocene of Anatolia. Two fossiliferous layers yielded micromammal assemblages, including various cricetine and arvicoline species. These include the species Mimomys cf. gracilis, Pliomys sp., Arvicolinae gen. sp. and the criceti...

We here describe fossil remains from three Lower and Middle Miocene localities of Anatolia, which we tentatively refer to chamaeleonids. The material comprises isolated tooth-bearing bones from the Early Miocene (MN 3) of Sabuncubeli (western Anatolia), the Early Miocene (MN 4) of Dededağ (western Anatolia), and the Middle Miocene (MN 5) of the wor...

The results of the surface prospection in Denizli province in 2019 and 2020.

Özlüce Fossil vertebrate locality is located 1km north of Özlüce Village which is located about 35 km NW of Muğla. The excavations and field surveys were conducted in 1993 under the scientific consultation of Prof. Dr. Berna Alpagut, together with Muğla Museum Directorate. The excavations had started in 1994 with the financial support and authoriza...

Burdur’un daha önce Paleolitik Çağ açısından yeterince araştırılmamış olması, konumu ve coğrafyası nedeniyle olası potansiyeli göz önüne alınarak 2021 yılında “Burdur İli Paleolitik Çağ Yüzey Araştırması”na başlanmıştır. 2021 araştırma sezonunda Bucak ve Kemer ilçelerinde yürütülen arazi çalışmalarında yaygın yaya yüzey araştırması yöntemi uygulanm...

The adaptive radiation of hipparionins after their Old World dispersal was linked with a trend towards smaller body sizes. The appearance of the small-sized forms has usually been associated to open environments and grazing diets. A recent approach, moreover, highlights the role of life history modifications related to habitat conditions as trigger...

A computed tomography scan of a travertine slab from the Karacalar Silver Travertine Quarry (Afyonkarahisar Province, Turkey) revealed the presence of an encased partial cranium, partial mandible and three vertebrae. 3D reconstruction of the fossil helped identifying it as Amphicyon giganteus. As the travertine caps a section correlated to MN7/8, t...

The herpetofauna of the late Miocene age in Turkey is nearly unknown, as it is represented by a single known anguine assemblage from the latest Miocene of Süleymanli locality. The amphibians and reptiles from the three early late Miocene (MN 9) localities of Bayraktepe 2, Kütahya, and Altıntaş in Anatolia are described here. One amphibian (Latonia...

Abundant procaviid fossils from archaeological contexts at Karain Cave, Antalya, Turkey, comprise the first record of this extant family of Hyracoidea outside Afro-Arabia. The relatively large body dimensions of the remains, which are attributed to Procavia capensis (the rock hyrax) indicate that the climate was relatively cool and humid, more so t...

Cereals are a central resource for the human diet and are traditionally assumed to have evolved from wild grasses at the onset of the Neolithic under the pressure of agriculture. Here we demonstrate that cereals may have a significantly longer and more diverse lineage, based on the study of a 0–2.3 Ma, 601 m long sedimentary core from Lake Acıgöl (...

The new fossil micromammal assemblage of Çapak represents a mixture of both Anatolian and European faunal elements. The locality is very important for understanding faunal evolution in the less well-known time interval at the end of the early Miocene of western Anatolia. In Çapak, nine species of rodents and one species of ochotonid were encountere...

The Pliohyracidae is a family of Hyracoidea that dispersed throughout Africa and much of low-latitude Eurasia during the middle Miocene to Plio-Pleistocene, having been recorded from Namibia, East Africa, Tunisia and Morocco, and from Spain in the west to China in the east, via France, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Russia, but curi...

We describe here new amphibian and reptile remains from three Oligocene localities of Turkey. Two of the localities (Kavakdere and Kocayarma) are situated in southeastern Europe and the other one (Kargi 2) in Anatolia, both areas where Oligocene herpetofauna is practically almost unknown. The material consists of albanerpetontids, pelobatid anurans...

This paper describes a well-preserved hemimandible of Percrocuta miocenica from Brajkovac in Central Serbia. Based on the faunal remains recovered so far, the site is attributed to Mammal Zone MN6 (Langhian, middle Miocene). Apart from Prebreza, this is only the second site where remains of P. miocenica have been found in Serbia, and the third one...

Bone histology has proved to be a valuable tool to obtain information about the palaeobiology and early taphonomic history of fossil vertebrates. However, there are still many extinct taxa for which bone histology studies could be applied to deduce information about their life history and early diagenetic changes. Here, we partially fill this gap b...

We describe here five new bovid crania from the Çorakyerler fossil site (Tüglu Formation, Çankırı Basin, north-central Anatolia, Turkey), the fauna of which is dated by magneto- and biostratigraphy to the late Miocene, around the Vallesian–Turolian boundary. The material is assigned to a new bovid taxon of medium-to-large size, Gangraia anatolica g...

The late middle Miocene (MN 8) sediments at Nebisuyu, in the southwestern extremity of the Gelibolu Peninsula, Turkey, yielded remains of a large individual of Listriodon splendens: a skull lacking the premaxillae but containing both cheek tooth rows, and a detached left maxilla fragment containing a canine. The material evidently represents a male...

Turkey is known for the wealth of fossil suids found in deposits of middle Miocene, late Miocene and Plio-Pleistocene levels but material of this family from early Miocene and Palaeogene deposits is rare in the country, one of the few published occurrences being from Şemsettin (Kumartaş Formation, MN 4, Çankiri-Çorum Basin). For this reason, it is...

Previously available samples of Hyracoidea from Paşalar (MN 6, Middle Miocene), Turkey, have indicated the presence of Pliohyracidae at the site, but the material was too scanty for confident identification. The single upper molar, an upper molar ectoloph fragment and an ascending ramal fragment were too uninformative for determining the taxonomic...

The present paper addresses the study of new fossils of the extinct lutrine Lartetictis Ginsburg & Morales, 1996 from the early middle Miocene of Göriach (Austria, late MN5-early MN6) and from the hominoid locality of Paşalar (Turkey, late MN5). The mandibular material of Lartetictis from Göriach is described and assigned to the type species, Larte...

Pythonids are fascinating extant reptiles comprising exclusively non-venomous Old-World taxa and including some of the largest known snakes (Murphy and Henderson, 1997). Being thermophilous reptiles, they are distributed in tropical and sub-tropical areas in sub-Saharan Africa, southern and southeastern Asia, Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea, and...

Kemiklitepe is a well-known locality with four recognised fossiliferous horizons, KTA to KTD, which have yielded a plethora of mammalian remains. Previous taxonomic studies indicate the presence of three giraffid taxa: Samotherium major and Palaeotragus rouenii from the uppermost three horizons, KTA, KTB and KTC, as well as Palaeotragus rouenii and...

New bovid material from the Upper Miocene site of Çorakyerler (Çankırı basin, Anatolia, Turkey) is described and compared here. The described taxon is identified as a representative of the stem caprine genus Qurliqnoria, previously known from the peri-Tibetan area exclusively. The stronger horn-core divergence, weaker anterior keel, smoother horn-c...

Homo erectus paleoenvironments in the early Pleistocene Denizli Basin: an integrated paleontological, sedimentological and geochemical approach

Five different ruminant taxa were found in the Gračanica coal mine: the tragulid Dorcatherium vindebonense, a palaeomerycid (Palaeomerycidae gen. et sp. indet.), the giraffe Giraffokeryx sp., and the bovids ? Tethytragus sp. and Eotragus ?clavatus. The ruminant fauna fits well to an early middle to middle middle Miocene age and is typical for a loc...

A 601 m long sedimentary sequence was drilled in Lake Acigöl, located in the lakes region of SW Anatolia, near the Denizli travertine from which the oldest hominin of Turkey was unearthed. Among all dating methods applied to the sedimentary sequence, paleomagnetism, through the recognition of geomagnetic chrons, was the most successful and led to a...

The large fossil vertebrates obtained from the alluvial flood-plain deposits of the Kolankaya Formation are determined as Skoufotragus laticeps (Andree, 1926) and Hipparion brachypus (Hensel, 1862), both representative elements of the palaeomammal faunas spanning from the eastern Mediterranean to Iranian domains during the late Miocene (early-middl...

The large fossil vertebrates obtained from the alluvial flood-plain deposits of the Kolankaya Formation are determined as Skoufotragus laticeps (Andree, 1926) and Hipparion brachypus (Hensel, 1862), as representative elements of palaeomammal faunas spanning from the eastern Mediterranean to Iranian domains during the late Miocene (early-middle Turo...

Small fossil vertebrates from several Pliocene and Pleistocene localities in Central Anatolia (Turkey) are reviewed. Data on small mammals represent assemblages from the early Pliocene (MN 14: Nasrettinhoca 1, 2 and Hamamkarahisar A, B), and late Pliocene (MN 16: Hoyhoytepe 1, 2, 3 and Mercan 1); Early Pleistocene (MN 17: Mercan 2), and Middle Plei...

The mammal locality of Gördes is only known from its test sample, as it has been subsequently destroyed. This small sample yielded a surprisingly rich assemblage, with five rodent species, four species of insectivore and a bat. Based on the rodent contents, the assemblage is assigned to Anatolian mammal zone D, equivalent to MN 3. One of the rodent...

Two new small mammal assemblages from the abandoned Harami lignite mine, as an addition to previously known Harami assemblages, provide a better insight in the palaeoenvironments in Anatolia in local Biozone C (MN 2, early Miocene). Based on the new material, the Eumyarion assemblages are considered to consist of three, rather than two species, in...

An old test sample from the Sabuncubeli Formation (Manisa, Turkey) yielded an interesting faunule, which, however, up to now had never been described. In Bornova 183, now inaccessible, five species of micromammal were encountered: the hamsters Eumyarion aff. montanus, E. intercentralis and Cricetodon kasapligili, the squirrel Palaeosciurus fissurae...

Isparta ili sınırları içinde Neojen devir çökellerinde, eskiden bilinenlere ek olarak yeni hominoid ve diğer memeliler fosil ve bulgu yerlerine ulaşılması amacıyla T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, Kültür Varlıkları ve Müzeler Genel Müdürlüğü izni ile Isparta Karasal Neojen’i Yüzey Araştırması projesi oluşturulmuştur. İlgili projenin 2017-2018 yılla...

The objective of this presentation is to make public for the first time the new Pliocene vertebrate locality of Afsar in the Sandıklı basin in Southwestern Turkey.

The fossiliferous site at Kavakdere is one of many important late Miocene fossil mammal-bearing localities in Anatolia. Previous taxonomic studies on its fauna have revealed a plethora of taxa. However, the fossil Giraffidae from this early Turolian locality were until now poorly documented. New comprehensive descriptions, comparisons and metric an...

The fauna of amphibians and reptiles (except turtles) from the early Miocene localities of the Kilçak section (Tur-key) is described here. The herpetofaunal assemblage of the Kilçak localities is the best documented early Mio-cene herpetofauna in Anatolia. The following taxa are revealed: Salamandra sp., Latonia sp., Eopelobates sp., Crocodylia ind...

Terrestrial fossil records from the SW Anatolian basins are crucial both for regional correlations and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. By reassessing biostratigraphic constraints and incorporating new fossil data, we calibrated and reconstructed the late Neogene and Quaternary palaeoenvironments within a regional palaeogeographic framework. Cu...

Alcicephalus neumayri is a large-sized giraffid, which is mostly known from its type locality, Maragheh, Iran. The taxon has also been reported from North China and it is in fact the most abundant giraffid known from the eastern outskirts of the Pikermian biome. Reassessment of previously studied material from the fossiliferous site at Kavakdere, r...

Sivatherium constitutes one of the most iconic extinct giraffids, mostly known from the Indian subcontinent and Africa. As the most prominent representative of the Sivatheriinae, the taxon, together with samotherines, symbolize an important clade of crown giraffids, exhibiting various early morphological evolutionary patterns. With only a few recog...

Lophocyonids are one of the more enigmatic groups of Carnivora in the European Miocene fossil record. Lophocyonids are clearly distinguished from other Feliformia by their peculiar lophodont dental morphology. For this reason, the systematic relationships of the family have been controversial. Here we describe and interpret dental remains from the...

Anchitheriinae kökeni Kuzey Amerika olan günümüzde Equidae’ye ait soyu tükenmiş bir alt familyadır. Bu gruba ait Anchitherium günümüzden yaklaşık 20 milyon sene önce deniz seviyesindeki global düşüşe paralel olarak Kuzey Amerika’dan Bering boğazı boyunca Asya’ya ve oradan Avrupa’ya yayılmıştır. Orta Erken Miyosen’den (MN3) Erken Geç Miyosen’e (MN9)...

Over the years with the increasing number of species, Çorakyerler has turned out to be a reference locality for the Anatolian Late Miocene. In this locality, which has an extremely rich fauna, two materials belonging to the family of Hystricidae have been found. The existence of these members was not known until 2015 and the knowledge of their exis...

In Anatolia, there are many localities dated to the Late Miocene. Many of these localities have been found between 1968-1970 during the Turkish-German Lignite Research Project. Some of the fossils that were found during this project are preserved in Natural History and Paleontology Museums abroad. Çorakyerler, a reference locality for the Late Mioc...

Citation for this article: Georgalis, G. L., K. Halaçlar, S. Mayda, T. Kaya, and D. Ayaz. 2018. First fossil find of the Blanus strauchi complex (Amphisbaenia, Blanidae) from the Miocene of Anatolia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2018.1437044.

A great number of carnivoran remains from various late Miocene localities of Turkey, housed in the Natural History Museum of Aegean University, Bornova-Izmir, are described and compared with those from Eurasian localities for their determination. Thirteen different taxa were determined and some of them are recognized for the first time in Turkey or...