A rhinoceros from the late miocene of Fort Ternan, Kenya

SYNOPSIS A rhinoceros from the Fort Ternan site, Kenya, Late Miocene in age, represents a form distinctly more advanced than the genera and species known from the Early Miocene although it is not directly ancestral to the Quaternary forms. It is a collaterally developed tuskless, two-horned, browsing species from the same ancestral stock as the modern Diceros bicornis (L.), and it is named Paradiceros mukirii. This is the first rhinocerotid filling the gap between the African Early Miocene and the Pleistocene rhinocerotids. Through the courtesy of Dr. L. S. B. Leakey the writer has been priviliged to study the rhinocerotid remains of the Fort Ternan site, housed in the Centre for Prehistory and Palaeontology, National Museum, Nairobi. The site, whence came Kenyapithecus wickeri Leakey (1962), has been K/A dated younger than East African sites yielding a fauna tentatively accepted as correlative with the European Burdigalian, or Early Miocene. The study of the Fort Ternan fauna is in progress. What is emerging is compatible with a Late Miocene (Vindobonian) age (cf. Leakey, 1967: 9). It is a pleasure to thank Dr. Leakey for his unfailing interest in the matter and for courtesies extended to me. My journey to East Africa, in the summer of 1967, has been made possible by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in New York, New York. Photographs have been kindly taken by Mr. E. J. Rundle. The generic and specific diagnosis of the Fort Ternan rhinocerotid is as follows: RHINOCEROTIDAE Paradiceros nov. gen.