1. Ancestors of Broom's pigs.
- Author
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Pickford, Martin
- Subjects
SEDIMENTS ,WARTHOG ,SUIDAE ,BIOLOGICAL evolution - Abstract
Between 1925 and 1950, Robert Broom described one new genus and four new species of extinct suids from Plio-Pleistocene sediments in South Africa – three of them of giant proportions and one the same size as the extant Wart Hog (Phacochoerus). Since the end of the Second World War, dozens of papers have been published on Plio-Pleistocene African suids, yet only one of the genera has had a detailed scenario of its origins published: Broom's genus Notochoerus, which is widely admitted to belong to the Tetraconodontinae and to be a descendant of Nyanzachoerus. The aim of this paper is to examine the well documented Late Miocene and Pliocene suid fossil record of Eurasia in order to determine whether any of the taxa could be closely related to the other African taxa described by Broom. A new species of suid from Egypt is described, which probably represents the earliest African record of the lineage that eventually gave rise to the kolpochoeres. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2012
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