Laboratoire de Paléontologie, Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution (UMR-CNRS 5554), Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France.
Departamento de Paleobiología, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2019 Aug 29;9(1):11874. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-47894-y.
Recent extensive field prospecting conducted in the Upper Miocene of Lebanon resulted in the discovery of several new fossiliferous localities. One of these, situated in the Zahleh area (Bekaa Valley, central Lebanon) has yielded a particularly diverse vertebrate fauna. Micromammals constitute an important part of this assemblage because not only do they represent the first Neogene rodents and insectivores from Lebanon, but they are also the only ones from the early Late Miocene of the Arabian Peninsula and circumambient areas. Analyses of the murines from Zahleh reveal that they belong to a small-sized early Progonomys, which cannot be assigned to any of the species of the genus hitherto described. They are, thereby, shown to represent a new species: Progonomys manolo. Morphometric analyses of the outline of the first upper molars of this species suggest a generalist and omnivorous diet. This record sheds new light onto a major phenomenon in the evolutionary history of rodents, which is the earliest dispersal of mice. It suggests that the arrival of murines in Africa got under way through the Levant rather than via southern Europe and was monitored by the ecological requirements of Progonomys.
最近在黎巴嫩上新统进行了广泛的野外勘察，发现了几个新的化石产地。其中一个位于 Zahleh 地区（黎巴嫩中部贝卡谷地），那里有一个特别多样化的脊椎动物群。微哺乳动物是这个组合的重要组成部分，因为它们不仅代表了黎巴嫩的第一个中新世啮齿动物和食虫动物，而且也是阿拉伯半岛和周边地区早更新世晚期的唯一啮齿动物和食虫动物。对 Zahleh 的鼠类的分析表明，它们属于一种小型的早期 Progonomys，不能归入迄今描述的任何一种。因此，它们代表了一个新的物种：Progonomys manolo。对这种物种的第一上臼齿轮廓的形态测量分析表明，它的饮食是杂食性的。这一记录为啮齿动物进化史上的一个主要现象提供了新的线索，即最早的老鼠扩散。它表明，老鼠抵达非洲是通过黎凡特而不是通过南欧进行的，并且受到 Progonomys 的生态需求的监测。
