Kaszab Zoltán (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 64. (Budapest 1972)
Jánossy, D.: Middle Pliocene microvertebrate fauna from the Osztramos Loc. 1. (Northern Hungary)
Remarks : KORMOS described (1933) the genus Baranomys as a peculiar Cricetine-like rodent, based on the new species B. loczyi. KOWALSKI (1956) recorded the remains from Podlesice under the same name, but described (1960) the Wçze-form as the new species „Baranomys longidens" . KRETZOI (1962) showed later that, according to the form of M 3 . the original material Baranomys loczyi from the typelocality Csarnóta is identical with the Wçze-form (M 3 was lacking at the time of the original description by KORMOS). Thus the name given by KOWALSKI in 1960 („Microtodon longidens" ) for the material of Wçze concerns the original form of Baranomys loczyi from Csarnóta. Therefore KRETZOI (1962) proposed the name B. kowalskii (with the S-shaped M 3 ) for the Podlesice-species. Owing to the quite different structure of this latter tooth, KRETZOI assumed it to represent a separate evolutionary line and to be distinct genus : Warthamys KRETZOI, 1969. The remains of Osztramos 1. belong clearly to this line and seem to be the latest representatives of this form. Ecological survey and geologic age of the Osztramos 1 microfauna. Taking into consideration the above description of the microfauna with the data of frequencies of the different species, one comes to the conclusion that the dormice are the most abundant elements of the assemblage. We may assume that all species of dormice as well as squirrels (Sciurus aff. warthae, Sciurus sp., Pliopetes sp.) were forest dwellers also in Pliocene times. The ecological significance of the species second in frequence, Apodemus aff. domináns, is not unambiguous in view of the fact that morphologically nearest species, the array of Apodemus sylvaticus to the fossil one is not a forest form but an ,,ubiquist" of our different habitats in our temperate climate. All the other members of the fauna are not only extinct species but also vanished genera and therefore their ecological significance is not wholly unambiguous. It is assumed in literature that Prospalax and the Cricetids (Rotundomys) as well as the Ochotonids had been savannah dwellers. Without drawing more far-reaching conclusions from these inferences, we may suppose that the contemporaneous environments of the times of accumulation of the sediment at Osztramos 1. seem to have been of a mixed nature, with forests prevailing over the steppic vegetation. A direct biostratigraphic correlation of the Osztramos 1 fauna may be made by the well elaborated Hungarian stratigraphical succession elaborated chiefly in recent times by KRETZOI (1969/b). With respect to the whole picture of the Microvertebrate fauna of our locality, its transitional nature between the „true" Tertiary and the Pliocene-Pleistocene-boundary faunae is rather conspicuous. The absence of true Cricetodontids and the prevailing of Murines speaks unambiguously for a typical Middle-Upper-Pliocene age. On the other hand, there are present some forms near the well-known Upper-Pliocene species, e.g. Pliopetes sp., Glis minor, Glirulus pusillus, Sminthozapus and chiefly Baranomys - but the absence of Mimomys („stehlini"-gTou^>) indicates an age older than the Uppermost Pliocene. Amblycoptus, the Eomyid (Leptodontomys) and Rotundomys, may be considered (only generically) as relicts from the Lower Pliocene (Lower Pannonian) times. However, it was shown in the systematic descriptions that Amblycoptus topali is a much more modern form than Amblycoptus oligodon from Polgárdi, not to speak of „ Anourosorex" kormosi from Kohfidisch. On the other side, Baranomys kowalskii progressus n.ssp. is an atavistic evolutionary branch of these peculiar Cricetids, and Polonomys may be especially characteristic of this period.
