Early Pleistocene White-toothed Shrew Crocidura kornfeldi (Lipotyphla, Soricidae) from Crimea.

Abstract

The remains of the white-toothed shrew Crocidura kornfeldi Kormos, 1934 (one skull fragment with almost complete dentition, the fragmental rostral part of a skull with the left upper incisor, a maxillary fragment, five mandibular fragments and an isolated upper incisor) from the Lower Pleistocene deposits of the Taurida cave in the central Crimea (Belogorsk district, Zuya village) are described. This earliest European species of the genus Crocidura was quite common in the Early Pleistocene of Central Europe and the Mediterranean; for the first time, it is described from Crimea and the entire Eastern Europe.