Unraveling the diversity of early felines: a new genus of Felinae (Carnivora, Felidae) from the Middle Miocene of Madrid (Spain)

We describe a hemimandible of a medium-sized feline from the Middle Miocene (middle Aragonian, MN 5, local biozone Dc, around 15.5 Ma) site of Príncipe Pío-2, a recently discovered fossil locality placed in the urban limits of Madrid city (Spain), within an area previously known for its rich paleontological findings. The specimen is very well preserved, showing the complete hemimandible, as well as all the teeth except the incisors. Some characters, such as the missing talonid in m1, the high p3, the large mesial cuspid in p4, and the presence of a vestigial m2, prevent its adscription to other known feline taxa such as <i>Styriofelis turnauensis</i> or <i>Miopanthera lorteti</i>, previously recorded in the Middle Miocene faunas from Europe, but absent in the central basins of Spain. The hemimandible has robust mandibular corpus and ramus compared with these latter and to extant felines of similar size, and exhibits a relatively stronger ridged masseteric line, which points towards the existence of a proportionally larger and more powerful m. masseter that generated a strong bite when hunting. These characters suggest that the Príncipe Pío-2 feline could have preyed upon relatively larger prey than those of extant, similarly sized felines. We propose the new genus and species <i>Magerifelis peignei</i> for the studied specimen, a species that would also include the material from the French Middle Miocene localities of Bézian and Artenay.