Abstract: In September 1998, while visiting the museum of the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, we saw a number of skulls with apparent ovibovine affinity in the museum' s storeroom. A few days later we found skulls of the same animal in a dragon—bone digger' s closet mixed up with other skulls and bones of common elements of the Hipparion fauna. Although imperfect in preservation, we obtained the best ones from the dragon—bone digger. In January 1 999, when Qiu and Xie were invited by the Hezheng county authorities to identify the fossils they acquired in the past few years, we finally realized that this unrecorded ovibovine animal should be one of the most characteristic forms of the Hipparion fauna of the whole Hezheng district (including the neighboring counties of Guanghe and Dongxiang). Among the thousand odd fossils, most of which were perfectly preserved skulls, 170 skulls are referable to this animal, the second largest group in number next only to the chilotheres. Elaborative study of this material needs, and has been planned, to be done in special monographs on systematic basis. Since this important ovibovine animal has never been known to science, a preliminary report is given below.