Trogontherium cuvieri Fischer from the Neede Clay (Mindel-Riss Interglacial) of the Netherlands

Some time ago Mr. G. M. Roding, director of the natural history museum at Enschede, sent me for identification two mandibular fragments with teeth of a large rodent collected in the clay pit at Needse Berg, province of Gelderland, by Mr. Ten Bokkel Huinink, the owner of the pit. The Neede Clay, Needian of Dutch terminology (Van der Vlerk and Florschütz, 1950, p. 149), is characterized by the abundance of the freshwater molluscs Viviparus diluvianus (Kunth) and Valvata naticina Menke; the scanty remains of large mammals found in this deposit, representing Elephas antiquus Falconer, Cervus elaphus L., and Dicerorhinus merckii (Jäger), were described already half a century ago by Rutten (1909). The Neede Clay corresponds to the great Mindel-Riss Interglacial; it is to be correlated with the English interglacial deposits of Clacton-on-Sea, Hoxne, and Swanscombe (Van der Vlerk, 1955, p. 37), and with those of Mauer and the main fauna of Mosbach in Germany (Azzaroli, 1951, p. 169). Both of these two last-mentioned localities yield Trogontherium cuvieri Fischer, an extinct beaver-like rodent, to which the mandibles from Neede should be referred. Abundant remains of another species of Trogontherium, T. boisvilletti (Laugel), have been described from the Tegelen Clay, province of Limburg, Netherlands, by Schreuder (1929); this deposit dates either from a Günz Interstadial (Schreuder, 1945) or from the Günz-Mindel Interglacial (Azzaroli, 1951, p. 169). In her last paper on Trogontherium, Schreuder (1951) refers the Pleistocene remains from the English and continental European localities west of the Rhine to T. boisvilletti, and those from the localities east of the Rhine to T. cuvieri.