Suidae Transition at the Miocene-Pliocene Boundary: a Reassessment of the Taxonomy and Chronology of Propotamochoerus pr
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Suidae Transition at the Miocene-Pliocene Boundary: a Reassessment of the Taxonomy and Chronology of Propotamochoerus provincialis Alessio Iannucci 1
&
Marco Cherin 2
&
Leonardo Sorbelli 3 & Raffaele Sardella 1
Accepted: 20 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The Miocene-Pliocene (Turolian-Ruscinian) transition represents a fundamental interval in the evolution of Euro-Mediterranean paleocommunities. In fact, the paleoenvironmental changes connected with the end of the Messinian salinity crisis are reflected by a major renewal in mammal faunal assemblages. An important bioevent among terrestrial large mammals is the dispersal of the genus Sus, which replaced all other suid species during the Pliocene. Despite its possible paleoecological and biochronological relevance, correlations based on this bioevent are undermined by the supposed persistence of the late surviving late Miocene Propotamochoerus provincialis. However, a recent revision of the type material of this species revealed an admixture with remains of Sus strozzii, an early Pleistocene (Middle Villafranchian to Epivillafranchian) suid, questioning both the diagnosis and chronological range of P. provincialis. Here we review the late Miocene Suidae sample recovered from the Casino Basin (Tuscany, central Italy), whose taxonomic attribution has been controversial over the nearly 150 years since its discovery. Following a comparison with other Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene Eurasian species, the Casino Suidae are assigned to P. provincialis and the species diagnosis is emended. Moreover, it is recognized that all the late Miocene (Turolian) European Propotamochoerus material belongs to P. provincialis and that there is no compelling evidence of the occurrence of this species beyond the Turolian-Ruscinian transition (MN13-MN14). Keywords Large mammals . Faunal turnover . Euro-Mediterranean . Latest Miocene . Messinian . Ruscinian
Introduction The late Miocene was a period of dramatic changes at a global scale (Cerling et al. 1997; Herbert et al. 2016), which also led to the physiographic separation of the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean (Krijgsman et al. 1999). At the Miocene-Pliocene boundary, the Messinian salinity crisis reached its acme and after that ended with an abrupt —if not properly catastrophic (Garcia-Castellanos et al. 2009)— restoration of the * Alessio Iannucci [email protected] 1
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Sapienza Università di Roma, PaleoFactory, P.le Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
2
Dipartimento di Fisica e Geologia, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Via A. Pascoli, 06123 Perugia, Italy
3
Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Edifci ICTA-ICP, c/ Columnes s/n, Campus de la UAB, 08193, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain
basin-ocean connection (Hsü et al. 1977; Meijer and Krijgsman 2005). Undoubtedly, the resulting environmental upheaval put strong pressure on continental ecosystems (Eronen et al. 2009; Carnevale et al
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