Miocene mammals of the Negev (Israel)

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Abstract
The early Miocene deposits of the Rotem and Yeroham basins in the Negev district of Israel have yielded 19 taxa of fossil mammals, of which two are new species: Gazella negevensis (Bovidae) and cf. Anasinopa haasi (Creodonta, Hyaenodontidae). This is the only early Miocene record of vertebrates from the southern Levant, with many typically African taxa including: Prodeinotherium sp., cf. Canthumeryx syrtensis, Dorcatherium cf. D. pigotti, Dorcatherium cf. D. chappuisi, Megapedetes cf. M. pentadactylus, Kenyalagomys sp., Crocodylus cf. C. pigotti, and Lates sp. (Teleostei). Owing to a quasi-spatial isolation of Gebel Zelten (Libya), Gebel Moghara (Egypt), Rusinga, Songhor (and others in East Africa), Bugti Hills (Pakistan) and the Negev, for which a general contemporaneity is suggested, endemism in these sites is relatively high, reflecting their different environments rather than heterochroneity. Hence similarity between these remote and rapidly changing regions was mainly based on congeneric level rather than conspecificity. On the basis of the general resemblance of the sedimentary sequence between the Negev deposits and the Marada Formation (Sirte Basin, North Africa), the generic affinities of the Negev fauna with early Miocene Afro-Arabian sites, and the relatively few Eurasian elements in its assemblage, we suggest that the Negev fauna records an early Afro-Asian migration event that may correspond to late (European Mammal unit) MN3a. It is shown that the spatio-temporal position of the Negev sites is crucial in interpreting the initiation of the biotic exchange between the Afro-Arabian and Eurasian realms. The vertebrate remains suggest the presence of diverse habitat types; aquatic, dense forest, woodland and grassland, and that a nucleus of open, drier habitats must already have existed along the Saharo-Arabian belt. We find the locomotor adaptations (cur-soriality) of mammals occupying open habitats during this period to be far ahead of their adaptations for grazing.