Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences, 89, 227-230, 1999 (for 1998) A tetraconodontine pig from the Upper Miocene of Turkey Jan van der Made and Vahdet Tuna ABSTRACT: Two species of Tetraconodontinae dispersed in the early Late Miocene from Eurasia into Africa. Tetraconodontinae then became the dominant pigs in the African Late Miocene and Pliocene. Although the dispersal to Africa must have come from SW Asia, no Tetraconodontinae were known from the area dating from the time of this dispersal. In this paper, a tetraconodontine tooth from the Nuri Yamut locality near Alcitepe in European Turkey is described. In morphology, size and in geographical and stratigraphical position this tooth is close to a form that is ancestral to part of the African Tetraconodontinae. The tooth is assigned to cf. Conohyus giganteus, one of the species that dispersed to Africa. The dispersals of these Tetraconodontinae seem to be more or less coeval with that of Hipparion and are assumed to be allowed for by a change in global climate. KEY WORDS: Alcitepe, Conohyus, Nuri Yamut, Sivachoerus, Tetraconodontinae, Vallesian. The Tetraconodontinae, a subfamily of Suidae or pigs, have a well established fossil record in the Middle and Upper Aragonian and Vallesian of Europe (MN 5-10; van der Made 1989, 1990a, b), in the Lower Miocene-Pliocenejaf the Indian Subcontinent (Pilgrim 1926; Pickford 1988) and in the Upper Miocene-lowermost Pleistocene of Africa (Cooke 1978a, b; White & Harris 1978; Harris & White 1979). Though the presence of the tetraconodontine genus Conohyus in the Lower Miocene of Africa has been claimed (Pickford 1986), there is no solid evidence for its presence (Van der Made, 1998). The earliest African tetraconodontines resemble early Late Miocene forms of rapidly evolving Eurasian lineages, suggesting that it was these forms which dispersed into Africa and not Early Miocene forms. There is a continuous record of Tetraconodontinae in Europe and in Pakistan and India immediately prior to the dispersal to Africa. However, SW Asia, the area immediately adjacent to Africa, had not yielded any latest Aragonian or Late Miocene Tetraconodontinae. The only records are in the Middle Aragonian of Bala and Pa^alar (Pickford & Ertlirk 1979; Fortelius & Bernor 1990). One of us (VT) collected a tetraconodontine tooth near the shrine of the Saint Nuri Yamut near Alcitepe (Eceabat, Figure 1 Geographical position of the locality of Nuri Yamut in the Sigindere Unit. European Turkey) W of the Dardanelles (Fig. 1). The only other taxon represented in this locality is Hipparion sp. These specimens were found in situ. The 'Nuri Yamut locality' is in the Sigindere Unit of the Alcitepe Member of the Eceabat Formation (Saner 1985). The Sigindere Unit overlies the Nebisuyu Unit which has a thickness of 9 m and consists of beds of greyish-green sandstone, greenish claystone and reddish pebbles. The poorly cemented sandstone of the Nebisuyu Unit yielded fossils of Hemicyon sansaniensis Lartet, Anchitherium sp. and Listriodon splendens Von Meyer, suggesting an Aragonian age. The Sigindere Unit has a thickness of 17-5 m and consists of alternating beds of poorly cemented yellowish sandstone, greenish claystone and reddish pebbles (Fig. 2). There are two fossiliferous levels. The lower level yielded Hoploaceratherium tetradactylum Lartet and the upper level contains the Nuri Yamut locality with the pig and Hipparion sp. and other localities with Lycyaena sp., Hipparion primigenium Meyer, Ceratotherium neumayeri (Osborn), Chilotherium habereri (Schlosser), Dorcatherium sp., Palaeotragus sp., Gazella sp. and Tragoportax amaltha (Roth & Wagner, 1854) (Tuna 1987). The Hoploaceratherium of the lower level is known from the uppermost Aragonian of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Hipparion is typically Vallesian, most other taxa occur in both Vallesian and Turolian and the carnivore is more typically Turolian (Bernor et al. 1996). The tetraconodonine tooth has a primitive morphology, and though evolving populations vary in morphology (including more progressive and more conservative morphologies), the tooth accords better with a Vallesian than with a Turolian age. All this suggests a Vallesian, or at latest an early Turolian, age for the upper fossiliferous level of the unit. The Sigindere Unit is overlain by the Degirmendere Unit consisting of a succession of 20 m of loosely cemented greyish sandstones. This unit yielded Hipparion mediterraneum Hansel and Giraffidae indet, suggest- ing a Turolian age. In this paper we describe the Late Miocene tetraconodontine tooth from Turkey and assign it to a taxon. It is stored in the Natural History Museum, Izmir. 1. Description and comparison The tooth has the structure of a suoid P 4 (Fig. 3) and is 167 mm long and 19-9 mm wide. It has the metacone very