Resumen de Anatomía functional del esqueleto post-craneal de Styriofelis lorteti (Carnivora, Felidae, Felinae) del Mioceno Medio (MN 6) de Sansan (Gers, France)

Manuel Jesús Salesa Calvo, M. Antón, Jorge Morales Romero, S. Peigné

• The postcranial skeleton of the European Middle Miocene feline Styriofelis lorteti has been traditionally known on the basis of fragmentary fossils mainly from the French locality of Sansan. The discovery of an almost complete skeleton in the same site in the excavations of 1990 opened the possibility of unprecedented assessment of the morphology and function of this early felid. In this paper we describe this material, and compare it with a sample of modern and fossil felids, finding a combination of a generally modern morphology, with moderate adaptations to terrestrial locomotion, besides a set of primitive characters linking S. lorteti with earlier felids like Proailurus lemanensis.