Moschidae is a family of pecoran even-toed ungulates, containing the musk deer (Moschus) and its extinct relatives. They are characterized by long "saber teeth" instead of horns, antlers or ossicones, modest size (Moschus only reaches 37Â lb (17Â kg); other taxa were even smaller) and a lack of facial glands. While various Oligocene and Miocene pecorans were previously assigned to this family, recent studies find that most should be assigned to their own clades, although further research would need to confirm these traits. As a result, Micromeryx, Hispanomeryx, and Moschus are the only undisputed moschid members, making them known from at least 18 Ma. The group was abundant across Eurasia and North America during the Miocene, but afterwards declined to only the extant genus Moschus by the early Pleistocene.
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Micromeryx in the context of Vallesian
The Vallesian age is a period of geologic time (11.6–9.0 Ma) within the Miocene used more specifically with European Land Mammal Ages. It precedes the Turolian age and follows the Astaracian age. The so-called Vallesian Crisis resulted in the extinction of several mammalian taxa characteristic of the Middle Miocene.
The term "Vallesian" was introduced by Catalan palaeontologist Miquel Crusafont in 1950 to mark the arrival of the equid Hipparion in Europe. The remaining European palaeofaunas, however, had been around since the Middle Miocene, including the moschid Micromeryx (a musk deer), the cervid Euprox, the suid Listriodon, and the felids Sansanosmilus and Pseudaelurus, and the Aragonian-Vallesian boundary does not represent a major shift in the European mammalian record. In contrast, the transition between Lower and Upper Vallesian corresponds to a major biotic crisis — the demise of most Aragonian artiodactyls, including the antelope Protragocerus, the bovid Miotragocerus, Listriodon, and the suids Hyotherium and Parachleusastochoerus. The crisis also affected rodents such as the family Eomyidae and most of the cricetids and glirids. They were replaced by species arriving from the east, Turolian in character: for example the suid Schizochoerus, the murid Progonomys, the bovids Tragoportax and Graecoryx, the hyaenid Adcrocuta, the felid Paramachairodus, and the suid Microstonyx.