Early Pleistocene equids (Mammalia, Perissodactyla) of Nalaikha, Mongolia, and the emergence of modern Equus Linnaeus, 1758 Véra EISENMANN Département Histoire de la Terre (UMR 5143), and Département d’Écologie et Gestion de la Biodiversité (UMR 5197), Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, 8 rue Buffon, F-75231 Paris cedex 05 (France)
[email protected] Tatiana KUZNETSOVA Department of Paleontology, Geological Faculty, Moscow State University, Moscow, 119992 (Russia) Eisenmann V. & Kuznetsova T. 2004. — Early Pleistocene equids (Mammalia, Perissodactyla) of Nalaikha, Mongolia, and the emergence of modern Equus Linnaeus, 1758. Geodiversitas 26 (3) : 535-561. ABSTRACT Evidence is given for the presence of at least three species of Equus at Nalaikha, Mongolia. The smallest, E. nalaikhaensis Kuznetsova & Zhegallo, 1996, well represented by skull and limb bones, belongs certainly to modern Equus (not Allohippus Gromova, 1949) and exhibits a mosaic of characters found in extant hemiones, asses, and Grevy’s zebras and in fossil E. altidens v. Reichenau, 1915 (from Süssenborn) and E. hipparionoides Vekua, 1962 (from Akhalkalaki). In accordance with recent biomolecular studies of equids, E. nalaikhaensis may be placed after the individualisation of caballines and between the branching points of hemiones and of the ass-zebra lineage. The KEY WORDS Mammalia, other species of Nalaikha are not well represented. They may be related to Perissodactyla, northeastern Siberian fossils of Olyorian age, in particular to caballines and to Equus, early Pleistocene, E. suessenbornensis Wüst, 1901 s.l. Other true Equus (in particular E. scotti Mongolia, Gidley, 1900, E. coliemensis Lazarev, 1980, E. apolloniensis Koufos, Old World, Kostopoulos & Sylvestrou 1997, and E. graziosii Azzaroli, 1966) are also North America, craniology, documented and discussed, stressing the frequent dissociation of characters phylogeny.