基于迄今为止发现的包括大型和小型哺乳动物在内的动物群资料,中国的新近纪被划分为7个哺乳动物期和13个哺乳动物群单位(NMU)。现在,通过对大量新化石地点和新化石记录的研究,中国的新近纪NMU已经得到显著的充实。这些新资料的重要意义在于极大地促进了我们对动物群转换和分期界线标定的认识。最近几年来,中国的新近纪哺乳动物分期变得更加精细,这主要得益于古地磁地层学的广泛应用,使得这些分期之间的界线能够进行准确的校正和定年。越来越多的古地磁分析资料使中国的新近纪哺乳动物群在与欧洲的动物群进行对比时有了一个良好的标尺。因此,本文主要依据哺乳动物化石和古地磁测年数据在中国的新近纪哺乳动物群单位和欧洲的新近纪哺乳动物分带(MN)之间进行对比。
Seven land mammal ages and thirteen mammal faunal units (NMU) are recognized for the Chinese Neogene based on updated large and small mammal faunas. Nowadays, NMU has been strongly broadened by data from new localities and new taxa in China. The significance of these new data is that they are beneficial toward our understanding of mammal turnovers and boundary calibrations. In recent years, the Chinese Neogene mammal ages have become more accurate with the introduction of magnetostratigraphy, which has enabled ages to be calibrated and well-dated at their boundaries. Increasingly abundant paleomagnetic measurements make a good calibration for the correlation of the Chinese Neogene mammalian faunas with their European counterparts. As a result, this paper compares and correlates NMU to the European Neogene mammal zones (MN) , based primarily on mammalian fossils and paleomagnetic datings.