The early Miocene rodents from Turija (Banovići), Bosnia and Herzegovina

The coal bearing deposits in the Turija opencast mine near Banovići yielded a smallmammal assemblage. The general composition of the assemblage is very similar to the ones from the Early Miocene of Anatolia. This similarity is more marked on the subfamily and genus level than on the species level. The Muridae are dominating the assemblage in diversity (with five species of four genera) as well as in number of specimens (80%). The Gliridae are with three species of two genera the second group (18%) and the Sciuridae with two genera and two species are rare (2%).
   The Muridae are represented by species of Deperetomys, Mirrabella and Eumyarion, and a new genus and species of a spalacid, the Gliridae by two species of Bransatoglis and a species of Microdyromys and the Sciuridae by Palaeosciurus and “Ratufa” obtusidens.
   The biostratigraphical correlation of the rodent assemblage from Turija depends necessarily on comparison with faunas from central Europe and Anatolia, because our knowledge of the local succession is very limited. Moreover, the Oligo/Miocene rodent fauna from the east coast of the Paratethys appears to be very different from that on the west coast. The absence of Eomyidae hampers a straightforward correlation with the European sequence, but six out of the ten species recognized in Turija are known from Europe and/or Anatolia also. The stratigraphical ranges of the species relative to the European MP/MN scheme and the preliminary Anatolian zonation shows convincingly that the best fit of the assemblage from Turija is with MN1 in Europe and zone B in Anatolia. In combination with magnetostratigraphical measurements the age estimate of this rodent assemblage is between 23.8 and 23.5 Ma.