A new Euprox from the Late Miocene of Yuanmou, Yunnan Province, China, with interpretation of its paleoenvironment

摘要

The Yuanmou Basin of Yunnan Province is ahotspot for the research of early hominid evolution and its environmental background. During the implementation ofthe Program 揜esearch of the Origin and Evolution of Early Man and Its Environmental Background?from 1998 to 2001, a huge quantity of hominoid and mammal fossils were col-lected. The present report systematically describes an Eu-prox robustus sp. nov. identified during the recent laboratory work on the collected material. Euprox is a group of earliest cervids with true antlers. The new species is the third one of the genus discovered in China. Judged by its morphologiccharacteristics, the new species feed on juicy and tenderleaves of dicotyledon. It implies that the vegetation of itsepoch in the Yuanmou Basin is a kind of southern subtropi-cal evergreen forest and the climate is humid and temperate with evident seasonality. The latter is mostly influenced by the monsoon and secondly by the latitude.