''Honanotherium'' is a genus of extinct giraffid from the late

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 ...

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

Province,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, and

East Azerbaijan Province East Azerbaijan Province ( fa, استان آذربایجان شرقی ''Āzarbāijān-e Sharqi''; az-Arab, شرقی آذربایجان اوستانی) is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is located in Iranian Azerbaijan, bordering Armenia, ...

, northwestern

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

.Bohlin, B. 1927. Die Familie Giraffidae. Pal. Sinica, Ser. C, IV, Fasc. 1, various pages.Nikos Solounias and Melinda Danowitz (2016). "The Giraffidae of Maragheh and the identification of a new species of Honanotherium". Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments. in press. doi:10.1007/s12549-016-0230-7. It was closely related to ''

Bohlinia ''Bohlinia'' is an extinct genus of the artiodactyl family Giraffidae that lived during the Late Miocene in Europe and Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about ...

'' and was once thought to be ancestral to the modern

giraffe The giraffe is a large African hoofed mammal belonging to the genus ''Giraffa''. It is the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant on Earth. Traditionally, giraffes were thought to be one species, ''Giraffa camelopardalis ...

(

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

Giraffa The giraffe is a large African hoofed mammal belonging to the genus ''Giraffa''. It is the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant on Earth. Traditionally, giraffes were thought to be one species, ''Giraffa camelopardalis ...

''). The living animal would have resembled a modern giraffe, but was somewhat shorter, with more massive ossicones. The first part of the generic name, ''honano'' refers to the

() province of

, where the first specimens were recovered. The second part, ''therium'', comes from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, ''θηρίον'' which means "beast."

Paleobiology

Like the modern-day giraffe, ''Honanotherium'' may have grazed on low-lying trees in the savannah environment, although its shorter neck shows that it probably fed on different plants than the extant giraffe.

References

Prehistoric giraffes Miocene mammals of Asia Miocene even-toed ungulates Prehistoric even-toed ungulate genera Fossil taxa described in 1927 {{paleo-eventoedungulate-stub