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Morphological analysis of Cricetodon aliveriensis (Rodentia, Mammalia) from the locality of Karydia (Rhodope, Northern Greece)

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Abstract

Cricetodon is present in the early Miocene of Greece in six assemblages, Cricetodon aliveriensis Klein Hofmeijer and de Bruijn, 1988 in Aliveri and Karydia (both MN4) and Cricetodon meini Freudenthal, 1963 in the MN5 localities of Thymiana A and C, Antonios and Komotini. The two MN4 small mammal assemblages in Aliveri (Euboea island) and Karydia (Northern Greece) have several species in common and Cricetodon aliveriensis is one of them. The aim of this paper is to record and describe this species, the most abundant rodent in the Karydia assemblage, to compare the morphological variation and to discuss the differences in size between the material of Karydia and Aliveri. The results of this study indicate that we deal with one Cricetodon species in Karydia, although more advanced than Cricetodon aliveriensis from Aliveri. This study highlights the importance of a detailed morphological description to the size range of a species. The Karydia material shows a large range in length and width measurements that may indicate heterogeneity of samples. However, the morphological similarity and the normal distribution of the Cricetodon values support the assignment to only one species.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Erasmus Placement program. We would like to thank the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands for providing access to the material studied in this paper. Moreover, the authors would like to thank Professor Hans de Bruijn for his essential help during the study of the material. We would also like to thank Dr. Peter Joniak, Melike Bilgin and Florentin Cailleux for their comments on the manuscript of this work. Last but not least we want to thank the editor Mike Reich as well as the reviewers, Jérome Prieto, Irina Ruf, Paloma López-Guerrero and the anonymous reviewer for their suggestions that significantly improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Panagiotis Skandalos

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Wilma Wessels

  3. Faculty of Geology and Geoenvironment, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Socrates Roussiakis & Constantin S. Doukas

Authors
  1. Panagiotis Skandalos
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  2. Wilma Wessels
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  3. Socrates Roussiakis
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  4. Constantin S. Doukas
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Correspondence to Panagiotis Skandalos.

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Handling Editor: Irina Ruf.

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Skandalos, P., Wessels, W., Roussiakis, S. et al. Morphological analysis of Cricetodon aliveriensis (Rodentia, Mammalia) from the locality of Karydia (Rhodope, Northern Greece). PalZ 96, 323–341 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12542-021-00601-7

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