Greek with () meaning "twisted" and () meaning "horn", referring to the shape of this group's horns. However, "Strepsiceriae" had the incorrect prefix and suffix, which this was corrected to "Strepsicerotini" in 1945 by American paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson. While the name "Strepsicerotini" was published first, most scientists used the latter name "Tragelaphini" as it is more widely used. Systematics Placement within Bovinae The spiral-horned antelopes belong to the subfamily Bovinae which also includes oxen of the tribe Bovini and two aberrant species of Asian antelope, the four-horned antelope and the nilgai which belong to the tribe Boselaphini. The relationship between the tribes varies in research concerning their phylogeny. Most molecular research supports a Bovini and Tragelaphini subclade of Bovinae. There are also some morphological support for oxen being the closet living relatives to the spiral-horned antelopes, most notably both groups have horn cores with a pedicle (the attachment point to the skull). There has been a few studies which have supported alternate arrangements, one being a sister relationship between the nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus) and the spiral-horned antelopes. Historically, the nilgai was classified as a tragelaphine by some scientists. Benirschke et al. (1980) worked on karyotypes with the lesser kudu and found them to share with the nilgai an X chromosome fused with autosome 14. Another study that analyzed the COII gene found the nilgai and lesser kudu being sister species (although the support was low and had limited species sampling). The majority of other molecular and morphological work do not support the placement of the nilgai in Tragelaphini, as it contradicts with their data and results. The fossil record Tragelaphini has diverged from their closet sister taxon for the last 15 to 18 million years. It was once thought that spiral-horned antelopes were uniquely African, but there have been Eurasian fossils found in Greece and the Caucasus. Kostopoulos and Koufos (2006) have described Pheraios chryssomallos from fossils found in the Turolian locality of Thessaly, Greece. The authors have found cladistic support of P. chryssomallos being the basal most tragelaphin (or at least a sister taxon to the group) based on 46 cranial features. This suggests that the ancestor of all known species of spiral-horned antelope must have originated in Europe during the late Miocene. The eastern European genus Pontoceros is another example, although this animal has been found in early Pleistocene beds of the Mygdonia basin. This suggests that