Phylogenetic analytical data, measurement analytical code to help identify dental fossils of Oligocene hyracoids from eastern Africa

The Topernawi area of west Turkana, northern Kenya, preserves a number of recently discovered vertebrate fossil localities of mid-Oligocene age. The Topernawi fauna provides important new data on mammalian evolution in equatorial eastern Africa during the mid-Cenozoic. Here, we describe five new species of hyracoids from Topernawi: Nengohyrax josephi, Abdahyrax philipi, Geniohyus ewoii, Thyrohyrax lokutani, and Thyrohyrax ekaii. These species range in reconstructed body mass from ∼8 to ∼150 kg, comparable to the body size range that has been observed at other hyracoid-rich Paleogene sites. We use Bayesian tip-dating phylogenetic analyses to estimate hyracoid relationships. We find that non-Thyrohyrax species from Topernawi are members of Geniohyidae, a clade of bunodont, Paleogene hyracoids. Despite being approximately the same age as some of the youngest and best-sampled horizons in the Jebel Qatrani Formation (Fayum, northern Egypt), the Topernawi hyracoid fauna is distinct, and shows no overlap at the species level; it also shows no species overlap with the ∼1.5–2.5 Ma younger Chilga localities in northern Ethiopia. The hyracoid assemblage from Topernawi adds to a growing body of evidence which suggests that certain distinctive clades known from earlier Oligocene horizons in northern Africa (Saghatherium, Selenohyrax, Titanohyrax) did not persist into the late Oligocene.

Methods
In short, this dataset contains a copy of raw measurement data, and a snapshot of code as analyzed in a study identifying, describing, and phylogenetically analyzing a set of fossilized teeth of Hyracoidea from the Oligocene locality of Topernawi in eastern Africa. A live version of the code can be found in the GitHub repository 'hyracoid-locus-example' managed by the lead author (GitHub username: nsvitek). Full citations for associated references can be found in the manuscript associated with this dataset. Raw data consists of linear measures. Please see more detailed materials and methods of associated manuscript.