Abstract

Platacanthomyid rodents are rare finds in European Miocene mammalian faunas, but have proved to be useful for biochronology, since the only genus Neocometes has a long chronological range in the Early and Middle Miocene of Europe. The chronospecies concept established by Oldřich Fejfar, includes three taxa; the youngest species, N. brunonis, is known from only a short stratigraphic period (early Astaracian, middle and late Badenian). Here we describe an upper M3 of N. brunonis from the Hammerschmiede level HAM4, magnetostratigraphically dated to 11.58 Ma (late Astaracian, earliest Pannonian), extending the Last Occurrence Date (LOD) for Neocometes by 1.7 myrs, into early Late Miocene.

Key words

Neocometes, Platacanthomyidae, Rodentia, Hammerschmiede, Miocene, Astaracian