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More than half a century ago, Percy Butler touted the importance of analyzing teeth to understand their function in an evolutionary context. There have been many advances in the study of dental functional morphology since that time. Here we review the various approaches to characterizing and comparing occlusal form that have been developed, especially dental topographic analysis. We also report on a new study of dental topography of platyrrhine primates (n = 341 individuals representing 16 species) with known differences in both dietary preferences and other food items eaten. Results indicate frugivores, gummivores, folivores, and seed eaters each have a unique combination of slope, relief, angularity, sharpness, and occlusal orientation patch size and count values. Likewise, among frugivores, those that supplement their diets with hard objects, insects, leaves, and seeds, also each have a distinctive suite of topographic features. We conclude that both primary and secondary diet choices select for occlusal form, and that functional morphology more reflects the types of foods and mechanical challenges they pose rather than the frequencies in which they are eaten.

Data, whether images, measurements, counts, occurrences, or character codings, are a cornerstone of vertebrate paleontology. Every published paper, master's thesis, and doctoral dissertation relies on these data to document patterns and processes in evolution, ecology, taphonomy, geography, geologic time, and functional morphology, to name just a few. In turn, the vertebrate paleontology community relies on published data in order to reproduce and verify others' work, as well as to expand upon published analyses in new ways without having to reconstitute data sets that have been used by earlier authors and to accurately preserve data for future generations of researchers. Here, we review several databases that are of interest to vertebrate paleontologists and strongly advocate for more deposition of basic research data in publicly accessible databases by vertebrate paleontologists.

The late Early Miocene locality of Shanwang, China is known for its rich and well preserved fossils. Here new suid material is described and previously published material is revised. Hyotherium shanwangense, sp. nov. is described based on a partial skull and includes the M3 from the site that was previously assigned to Palaeochoerus cf. pascoei. A right lower jaw is referred to Sinapriculus linquensis, gen. et sp. nov., a primitive suid. The type material of Hyotherium penisulus is assigned to Listriodontinae. The Chinese Hyotherium seems to lie close to the ancestry of tetraconodonts. The more primitive suid Sinapriculus linquensis may represent a survival of an earlier suid radiation in East Asia and the Shanwang suid community as a whole could be seen as a sample of a previously unsuspected East Asian early suid diversity. Such a view would be concordant with the record of late Eocene and early Oligocene suoids from China and Thailand.

The early middle Miocene (MN 6; ca. 15 Ma) locality of Pasalar in western Anatolia (Turkey) has produced a large and well studied collection of land mammals, including hominoid primates. We confirm the co-occurrence of two species of listriodont suids at this locality, and describe one of them as Bunolistriodon meidamon sp. nov. The other species is referred to Listriodon splendens. B. meidamon is characterised by extreme widening of the central incisors, large size of the male upper canines, labiolingually compressed (“meidamonic”) lower male canines, and narrow cheek teeth. These synapomorphies define a clade comprising at least B. latidens and B. meidamon, which are thus separated from the plesiomorphic species complex of listriodonts lacking lophed molars (Listriodon, Lopholistriodon) or cranial appendages (the “horned” kubanochoeres).

WOS: 000372953300004 Ouranopithecus turkae, from the late Miocene of Corakyerler in Central Anatolia, is considered one of the last known occurrences of great ape in the eastern Mediterranean. The Corakyerler fauna has previously been correlated with MN 11 to early MN 12 on the basis of biochronology, and its faunal composition has been found to contrast with those from contemporaneous sites. In this paper, we present the magnetostratigraphy of the Corakyerler site and an expanded interpretation of its paleobiogeographical and paleoecological contexts. The paleomagnetic results reveal two intervals of normal polarity and an intervening interval of reversed polarity in the main fossiliferous section. Of the three likely age correlations spanning 8.13-7.15Ma (MN 11-MN 12), we favor correlation with chron 4n, with a possible age range of the fossiliferous deposit between 8.11 and 7.64Ma (late MN 11). The geographic distribution of genus-level faunal similarity and mean hypsodonty show that Corakyerler is a typical representative of the Pikermian chronofauna with a wide range of faunal similarity, including late Miocene localities from the eastern Mediterranean, eastern Asia, and eastern Africa. Lithological and sedimentological characteristics of the fossiliferous horizon, however, indicate a lacustrine depositional environment and relatively humid local conditions within the more arid regional context. This special setting could explain the unexpected occurrence of a hominid primate at Corakyerler.Citation for this article: Kaya, F., N. Kaymakci, F. Bibi, J. T. Eronen, C. Pehlevan, A. C. Erkman, C. G. Langereis, and M. Fortelius. 2016. Magnetostratigraphy and paleoecology of the hominid-bearing locality Corakyerler, Tulu Formation (Cankr Basin, Central Anatolia). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2015.1071710. NSF-RHOI 'Anatolian Upper Miocene Project' [0321893]; Academy of FinlandAcademy of Finland We would like to thank all the people who have dedicated their efforts to this excavation project and the magnetostratigraphic sampling of the section. F.K., C.P, and A.C.E. are grateful to A. S. Erol, project leader of the, Corakyerler excavation, for allowing them to work long years under hard conditions at, Corakyerler, and to E. S. Gulec, who played a key role in the initiation of the first, Corakyerler excavations and who provided the back-hoe for magnetostratigraphic sampling. For their valuable suggestions, we would like to thank the reviewers of this article. We thank A. H. Kaya and C. TenWolde for editing the language of the article. This work was supported by the NSF-RHOI 'Anatolian Upper Miocene Project' (grant no.: 0321893) and by a grant from the Academy of Finland to M. Fortelius.

The occurrence of two species of the suid Listriodon at the middle Miocene locality Pasalar, western Anatolia, offers a rare possibility to compare dental wear and microwear in sympatric, closely related species. We studied all the worn tooth surfaces available in a sample of the lophodont Listriodon cf. L. splendens and the sublophodont L. aff. L. latidens from Pasalar, using simple methods to describe and quantify various aspects of wear. Major differences between dental surfaces and various sets of occlusal facets can be shown within and between the species. The differences within species among “major,” “minor,” and “phase II” facets are pronounced, more so than the difference between buccal and lingual facet groupings. The difference between species is most marked for the phase II facets, which also have the largest wear features. The between-species difference (but not the between-facet group difference) is much stronger for moderately worn teeth than for little-worn or much-worn teeth. The ...

Dietary analyses of herbivorous mammals are important for paleoecological reconstruction. Several methods applicable to fossil teeth have been developed lately. The mesowear method based on wear-induced occlusal shape and relief of ungulate molars has proven to be a robust method for dietary analysis. In its original form it can only be used for selenodont, plagiolophodont, and ectolophodont ungulate molars, but the principle can be extended to other kinds of tooth morphology. We introduce a new method of dietary analysis for proboscideans similar to the mesowear method, based on angle measurements from worn dentin valleys reflecting the relief of enamel ridges. The enamel ridges should be heavily worn when the abrasiveness of diet increases, resulting in lower occlusal relief and larger angles. For testing this, we compared the mesowear angles with stable carbon isotope values from dental enamel from populations of extant and fossil species from localities from Kenya and India. This enables us t...

All known nasal horns of the Pleistocene Palearctic woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis (Blumb.), are laterally flattened and transversely banded. A nasal horn discovered in the Museum of Paleontology, University of Helsinki, Finland, is described and figured. The old literature on woolly rhino horns is reviewed and the relevant plates from Brandt (1849) are reproduced. The differences between nasal and frontal horns are discussed and the shape of the nasal horn is interpreted as primary. The old contention that the woolly rhino used its nasal horn to shovel snow is supported, and the dynamics and significance of this behaviour are discussed. The transverse bands are interpreted as annuli and suggest a stronger sexual dimorphism in horn size in Coelodonta antiquitatis than in living rhinos. Such dimorphism in a probably migratory rhinoceros of a strongly seasonal environment would be in accordance with the general relationships proposed by Geist (1974) and Jarman (1974).