This paper is a study of part of the rodent fauna collected at Hambach 11C, located in the Hambach lignite mine in north-western Germany. The deposits exposed here are fluvial channel fills of Late Pliocene age (MN16a) and the rodent material is compared to previously published material from the contemporaneous deposits of Hambach 11. Four species are discussed: two Castoridae, Castor fiber Linnaeus, 1758 and Trogontherium minus Newton, 1890 and two Sciuridae, Blackia miocaenica Mein, 1970 and Pliopetaurista pliocaenica Depéret, 1897. This new material is of great importance as the fossil records of T. minus and B. miocaenica are very scarce so far. Blackia is especially rare in the Late Pliocene and this occurrence is one of the three youngest of the genus. We also described the most complete juvenile material of Trogontherium minus. The fauna is indicative of fluvial environment surrounded by a forest of deciduous trees and of a temperate and humid climate.

Fort Ternan is a middle Miocene (c. 13.7-13.8 Ma) site famous for its fossils of Kenyapithecus wickeri Leakey, 1962, considered the earliest African hominoid. Herein, the Carnivora and Hyaenodonta from this site are described and placed in their temporal context, showing the middle Miocene to be a time of transition from archaic carnivores of the early Miocene and carnivores of more modern aspect from the late Miocene. Fort Ternan includes: Amphicyonidae represented by ?Myacyon peignei n. sp., a new form distinguished by its hypercarnivorous m1, P4 with large protocone shelf, and M1 with reduced lingual shelf; Barbourofelidae, represented by a derived form; Percrocutidae, represented by abundant material of Percrocuta tobieni Crusafont & Aguirre, 1971; Viverridae, represented by the paradoxurines Kanuites lewisae Dehghani & Werdelin, 2008, and cf. Orangictis Morales & Pickford, 2005, and a putative viverrine; and Hyaenodonta represented by the teratodontine Dissopsalis pyroclasticus Savage, 1965 and a very large hyainailourine. This assemblage is a melange of forms harkening back to the early Miocene (the Hyaenodonta and Amphicyonidae), an evolving, still extant lineage (Viverridae), and more typical late Miocene forms (derived Barbourofelidae and Percrocutidae).

Amphicyonidae are a common element of carnivoran faunas in the early and middle Miocene of Eurasia and North America, but by the Messinian they had become extinct there, except possibly on the Indian subcontinent. In Africa, amphicyonids are poorly known from a scattering of records from the late Oligocene to the late Miocene. In this paper, we describe the last-surviving amphicyonid in Africa, from Messinian-age sediments (dated c. 6.5-5.3 Ma) of Ethiopia (Gona) and Kenya (Lothagam and possibly Lemudong’o). Th is new taxon shows unique adaptations to hypercarnivory in the lower molars and was small for an amphicyonid, dentally about the size of a coyote, Canis latrans.