Fossil and occurrence points of Rhinocerotidae, Elephantidae, Equus, and Camelus in China from the Pleistocene to the present

Rhinocerotidae, Elephantidae, Equus, and Camelus are large herbivorous mammals that have inhabited China from the Pleistocene to the present. Wen et al. studied a large amount of historical data to map the historical occurrences of these animals in China, including a small number of fossil sites and a majority of occurrence points recorded in the literature. We digitized the paper maps of these four taxa to create this dataset. This dataset includes 899 records of Rhinocerotidae, 534 records of Elephantidae, 277 records of Equus, and 417 records of Camelus.

Methods
 The original data were obtained from the book The Distributions and Animals in China compiled by Wen et al. Wen et al. collected historical records, animal fossils, murals, painted pottery, and other materials to determine the fossil sites and occurrence points of animals. They standardized and classified animals with various names from the literature, although most classifications could not be refined to the species level. Locations where animal fossils were found were recorded as fossil points. Multiple fossil individuals found at the same location were recorded as a single fossil point. The locations extracted from materials such as painted pottery and murals were treated similarly. However, the recorded occurrence points in the literature were not as precise. Only a few occurrence points had mapped locations, while most were marked at the center of the administrative regions where they were reported. Wen et al. plotted the fossil sites and occurrence points on paper maps. We scanned these paper maps into electronic files. Using ArcGIS, we performed georeferencing and digitization to obtain the shapefile-format data for fossil sites and occurrence points.