[The fossil record of the Eurasian Neogene insectivores (Erinaceomorpha, Soricomorpha, Mammalia) : Part I / L.W. van den Hoek Ostende, C.S. Doukas and J.W.F. Reumer (editors)]: Greece

Introduction The Neogene insectivores from Greece span an interval from Early Miocene to Biharian but certainly do not represent a continuous succession. The first reference of small mammals in Greece is by Dames (1883), who described Mus [=Parapodemus] gaudryi from the classical locality of Pikermi. The first report of an insectivore is again from Pikermi. Thenius (1952) described a fragmentary mandible with p2-m2 sin., plus an isolated p4 dex. as Galerix exilis. Doukas et al. (1995) referred the specimen to Schizogalerix moedligensis. Credit should be given here to Hans de Bruijn (Utrecht University), who was instrumental in promoting small mammal research in Greece. The search and research for small mammals started in earnest in 1970, when De Bruijn started collecting in various localities. This is the reason why part of the Greek material is stored at the small mammal collections of Utrecht University and part at the small mammal collections of the Paleontology Museum of Athens University. De Bruijn, a dedicated "rodent man" himself, recognized the importance of insectivores in the study of small mammal assemblages, and enticed others, including the present author, to work on them. An effort is made to include here yet unpublished faunas that are in preparation. We feel that this volume is an important work for future references and would be shame not to include faunas that will be published shortly. Therefore provisional fauna lists are given for the localities from Karydia and Komotini (NE Greece), and from the FlorinaPtolemais-Servia basin (NW Greece). The small mammal material of the latter localities,