''Nestoritherium'' is an extinct genus of

chalicothere Chalicotheres (from Greek '' chalix'', "gravel" and '' therion'', "beast") are an extinct clade of herbivorous, odd-toed ungulate (perissodactyl) mammals that lived in North America, Eurasia, and Africa from the Middle Eocene until the Early Plei ...

; it has been dated to have lived from the

late Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene epoch (geology), Epoch made up of two faunal stage, stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million ye ...

to the Early Pleistocene (11.6–0.781 mya). This range makes ''Nestoritherium'' one of the most recently dated chalicotheres. It has been found in fossil sites in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

and

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 ...

. The genus ''Nestoritherium'' was erected by German paleontologist

Johann Jakob Kaup Johann Jakob von Kaup (10 April 1803 – 4 July 1873) was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in an innate mathematical order in nature and he attempted biological classifications based on the Quinarian system. Kaup ...

in 1859 for the species then known as ''Chalicotherium sivalense'', itself named in 1843 by Falconer and Cautley from early Pleistocene material from India. The shortened faced and brachyodont dentition suggest it belongs to the subfamily

Chalicotheriinae Chalicotheriines are one of the two subfamilies of the extinct family Chalicotheriidae, a group of herbivorous, odd-toed ungulate ''(perissodactyl)'' mammals that lived from the Eocene to the Pleistocene. The other subfamily is the Schizotherii ...

. ''Nestoritherium fuguense'' was named from partial lower jaw and palate material from Miocene beds in Fugu County, China in 2014. Material consisting of a fragmentary upper and lower molar recovered from the (early Pleistocene) Irrawaddy Formation in Myanmar has been referred to the genus ''Nestoritherium''. A femur of possible chalicothere origin was recovered from Pliocene deposits in

Yenangyaung Yenangyaung ( my, ရေနံချောင်း; literally "stream of oil") is a city in the Magway Region of central Myanmar, located on the Irrawaddy River and 363 miles from Yangon. Until 1974, it remained the capital city of both Minbu Div ...

in 1897.

References

Chalicotheres Miocene mammals of Asia Pliocene mammals of Asia Pleistocene mammals of Asia {{paleo-oddtoedungulate-stub