Simocyon batalleri

Simocyon batalleri is an extinct carnivoran of the red panda family Ailuridae, known only from the late Miocene of Spain. Viret described it in 1929 as Cephalogale batalleri from a fragment of right upper jaw found in sediments exposed by an underground railway excavation below Sabadell, near Barcelona, and it was later placed in Metarctos and then in Simocyon. The best material comes from the Batallones-1 site near Madrid, about nine million years old, where two skulls and jaws of two individuals, one a young adult and one older, were found. It is intermediate between the older Simocyon diaphorus, which has a less reduced third lower premolar, and the later Simocyon primigenius, whose lower jaw is modified. Its teeth show an emphasis on shearing and crushing, and the genus is described as having a more carnivorous diet than any other ailurid or procyonid.