Late Miocene proboscideans from Samos Island (Greece) revisited: new specimens from old collections

In this article we present new proboscidean remains from the late Miocene (Turolian) of Samos Island (Greece), which are stored at the old Samos collections of Darmstadt, Frankfurt a. M. (Germany), Lausanne (Switzerland) and Vienna (Austria), and originate from the excavations or fossil collections that took place on the island at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The specimens belong to juvenile individuals of deinotheres, choerolophodonts and amebelodonts. The deinothere material is attributed to the last European huge-sized deinothere, Deinotherium proavum. The described skull from Samos is so far the most complete specimen of all known Miocene juvenile deinotheres from Eurasia and Africa. The majority of the Samos choerolophodont specimens represent the advanced morph of Choerolophodon pentelici, whereas one shows more archaic features and belongs to the primitive evolutionary stage of this species. This more primitive morph could originate from the lower fossiliferous
horizons of Samos, which are dated to the early Turolian. The third proboscidean is attributedto the tetralophodont shovel-tusker Konobelodon atticus, a rare taxon in the Samos fauna. Together with the previously described zygodont Mammut from Samos, these four proboscideans are typical for the Turolian proboscidean fauna of Southeastern Europe. We discuss the biostratigraphy of the Samos proboscideans aiming to unravel some aspects of the chronological range of the late Miocene proboscideans with emphasis in the Southern Balkans and Turkey.