Prodinoceratidae Flerov, 1952

Missiaen, Pieter & Smith, Thierry, 2008, The Gashatan (late Paleocene) mammal fauna from Subeng, Inner Mongolia, China, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 53 (3), pp. 357-378 : 374

Family Prodinoceratidae Flerov, 1952

Prodinoceras efremovi ( Flerov, 1957)

Order Mesonychia Matthew, 1937

Family Mesonychidae Cope, 1875

Dissacus serratus ( Chow and Qi, 1978)

preservation of the femur in Dissacus zanabazari does not allow a closer comparison.

Mesonychids are generally regarded as cursorially adapted, carnivorous ungulates, with Dissacus as the most basal genus ( Szalay 1969; O’Leary and Rose 1995; Geisler and McKenna 2007). The generally slender femur of Dissacus serratus has well−developed trochanters, transversely compressed shaft, and a deep distal epiphysis with a long, narrow patellar groove. These features indicate a cursorial mode of life ( O’Leary and Rose 1995), and the overall anatomy of the femur of D. serratus is closer to the cursorially specialised Mesonyx than to the generalised, subcursorial Pachyaena (see O’Leary and Rose 1995). Dental and femoral morphology of D. serratus thus clearly indicate carnivorous and cursorial adaptations. As D. serratus is the only large carnivore found at the Subeng site, and is also the only large carnivore described from the Nomogen site and the most abundant large carnivore at Bayan Ulan (Meng et al. 1998), we consider D. serratus , an important, possibly the most important, carnivore of the Gashatan Subeng local environment.

Stratigraphic and geographic range.— Dissacus serratus is known from the Gashatan (late Paleocene) Nomogen Formation at Nomogen, Bayan Ulan and Inner Mongolia, China.