The Earliest Fossil Pangolin (Pholidota: Manidae) from Africa

Abstract

Recent fieldwork reveals the first evidence of fossil early Tertiary pangolins in Africa. Although extant pangolins inhabit tropical Africa and Asia, the only other fossil pangolins from Africa are from rocks of late Pliocene and Pleistocene ages in Cape Province, South Africa (Klein, 1972; Hendey, 1973). In contrast, pangolins have been described from the Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene of Europe (Kormos, 1934; Guth, 1958; Storch, 1978), the Oligocene of North America (Emry, 1970), and the Pleistocene of Asia (Hooijer, 1947; Harrison et al., 1961). This temporal and geographic distribution has led to speculation that pangolins were not an "old African" group (Patterson, 1978). The specimens described in this paper indicate that pangolins were established in Africa by the middle Oligocene, alongside other typically African mammals such as hyracoids, proboscideans, and catarrhine primates