Cerro de los Batallones (''Hill of the Battalions'') is a hill at

Torrejón de Velasco Torrejón de Velasco is a municipality of the Community of Madrid The Community of Madrid (; es, Comunidad de Madrid ) is one of the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain. It is located in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula, and of th ...

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

where a number of fossil sites from the Upper

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

(

MN10 MN1, MN 1, or MN-1 may be: * Minnesota State Highway 1 * Ulaanbaatar, ISO 3166-2 geocode for the capital of Mongolia * Minnesota's 1st congressional district * The ''MN1'' gene on human chromosome 22 * MN 1 (biostratigraphic zone), a biostratigrap ...

) have been found. Nine sites have been discovered with predominantly vertebrate fossils, invertebrates and plants being less represented. The first deposits were discovered accidentally in July 1991. Batallones-10 (B-10) is considered to contain the oldest representative of fossils.

Fossils

Nearly the entire proportion of fossils of Batallones-1 were of

Carnivora Carnivora is a Clade, monophyletic order of Placentalia, placental mammals consisting of the most recent common ancestor of all felidae, cat-like and canidae, dog-like animals, and all descendants of that ancestor. Members of this group are f ...

ns. The species of sabre-tooth cat known as ''

Promegantereon ''Promegantereon'' is an extinct genus of machairodont from the Miocene of Europe. It is one of the oldest machairodont cat species in the Smilodontini and is believed to be an ancestor of ''Megantereon'' and ''Smilodon''. Description ''Promega ...

ogygia'' and ''

Machairodus ''Machairodus'' (from el, μαχαίρα , 'knife' and el, ὀδούς 'tooth') is a genus of large machairodontine saber-toothed cats that lived in Africa, Eurasia and North America during the late Miocene. It is the animal from which the su ...

aphanistus'' (the first complete skull) were found at B-1, as was ''

Simocyon ''Simocyon'' ("short-snouted dog") is a genus of extinct carnivoran mammal in the family Ailuridae. ''Simocyon'', which was about the size of a mountain lion, lived in the late Miocene and early Pliocene epochs, and has been found in Europe, Asi ...

'' a type of

red panda The red panda (''Ailurus fulgens''), also known as the lesser panda, is a small mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It has dense reddish-brown fur with a black belly and legs, white-lined ears, a mostly white muzzle ...

. In regards to the saber-tooth cats, Batallones-1 represents an ideal site for recording the percentage of specimens for which breakage of the upper canines occurred. Promegantereon, Machairodus and Paramachairodus are perfect examples of this at Batallones; fossils indicate a high number of canine breaks from where the teeth hit the bones of a struggling victim, indicating these early machairodonts would use their elongated teeth to subdue prey as modern big cats do. A new species of '' Hispanomys'' (''

Rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are na ...

ia'') was found at various sites. A new species of ''

Micromeryx ''Micromeryx'' is an extinct genus of musk deer that lived during the Miocene epoch (about 16-8 million years ago). Fossil remains were found in Europe and Asia. The earliest record ( MN4) of the genus comes from the Sibnica 4 paleontological si ...

'' (deer) was found at B-1 and B-10.

Fauna

Below is a list of notable fossil genera from Cerro de los Batallones.

Artiodactyla

*†''

Microstonyx ''Microstonyx'' was an extinct genus of suid that existed during the Miocene in Asia and Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its hi ...

'' *† Boselaphine antelopes *†'' Decennatherium rex'' *†'' Micromeryx flourensianus''