Abstract
A river otter hemimandible has been rediscovered during the revision of the historical collections of G.A. Blanc from Grotta Romanelli, complementing the ongoing multidisciplinary research fieldwork on the site. The specimen, recovered from the level G (“terre rosse”; early Late Pleistocene or late Middle Pleistocene), is here assigned to Lutra lutra. Indeed, morphological and morphometric comparisons with other Quaternary Lutrinae fossils from Europe allow to exclude an attribution to the relatively widespread and older Lutra simplicidens, characterized by distinctive carnassial proportions. Differences with Cyrnaonyx antiqua, which possessed a more robust, shellfish-feeding dentition, support the view of a successful niche repartition between the two species during the late Middle to Late Pleistocene of Europe. The occurrence of Lutra lutra from the “terre rosse” of Grotta Romanelli suggests deep modifications of the landscapes due to the ecological adaptation of the taxon, and indicates that the Eurasian otter spread into Europe at the Middle–Late Pleistocene transition.
Highlights
Otters (Lutrinae), subfamily of Mustelidae, constitute a widely distributed carnivoran group (13 extant species), which evolved morphological adaptations for living and hunting in aquatic environments (Wilson and Mittermeier 2009; Nowak 1999)
Within the Lutra group, the specimen from Grotta Romanelli and those of L. simplicidens fall in the broader variability of L. lutra
The studied specimen lacks both exact stratigraphical and taphonomic information, in level G lithic artifacts referred to Mousterian (Middle Paleolithic) were found, which document the human occupation of the cave
Summary
Otters (Lutrinae), subfamily of Mustelidae, constitute a widely distributed carnivoran group (13 extant species), which evolved morphological adaptations for living and hunting in aquatic environments (Wilson and Mittermeier 2009; Nowak 1999). If Lontra occurred in North American deposits since the Pliocene (Prassack 2016), placing the first appearance of Lutra in a chronological framework is on the contrary complicated by the use of the genus either as a waste-basket taxon, or in sensu lato, to allocate specimens of uncertain affinities and/or Lutra-like morphology (Willemsen 1992; Geraads et al 2015; Cherin et al 2016). In. fact, the earliest “Lutra” species, Lutra affinis Gervais 1859, is only known from three sites close to the Miocene–Pliocene boundary: Venta del Moro (Spain), Maramena (Greece) and Montpellier (France). Several putative Lutra species have been described from the Pliocene to the Early Pleistocene of Europe (Gervais 1859; Pohle 1919; Kurtén 1968; Willemsen 1992; Fejfar and Sabol 2004), but none of them provides conclusive evidence of their generic status (Cherin et al 2016)
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