The Late Villafranchian equids from the locality Tsiotra Vryssi (Mygdonia basin, Macedonia, Greece)

Abstract

The genus Equus arrived from North America to Eurasia at the beginning of Pleistocene (2.58 Ma) (Lindsay et al., 1980; Azzaroli, 1983; Bernor et al., 2019; Rook and Martínez-Navarro, 2010; Rook et al., 2019) with its first occurrence marking a faunal turnover and significant environmental changes from humid-warm ecosystems to colder-drier conditions. During the Early Pleistocene, Equus had been already significantly radiated in Eurasia, providing several lineages, some of them surviving till recent times. In Greece, the Equus datum is possibly traced in Damatria (Rhodes Island; van der Meulen and van Kolfschoten, 1986). Equids are the most common element in the Pleistocene Greek faunal assemblages, often exceeding 50% of the local finds in a number of specimens. Most of the Greek Equus remains come from the middle–late Villafranchian and Epivillafranchian. Mygdonia Basin (Central Macedonia, Greece), being at the crossroads of three continents, becomes an important path for faunal dispersals and a gateway for faunas coming from Asia Minor to South-Western Europe and vice versa. Several mammal fossiliferous sites have been discovered in this basin by the Laboratory of Geology and Palaeontology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (LGPUT) and many fossils have been unearthed, providing important palaeontological and biochronological data for Greece and beyond (Koufos and Kostopoulos, 2016 and references therein). Tsiotra Vryssi (TSR), a fossiliferous locality in Mygdonia Basin, dated between 1.78–1.5 Ma (Konidaris et al., 2021), provided a rich sample of fossil equids. Konidaris et al. (2015) preliminarily reported two species of Equus based on their size.