New Suidae material (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) from the Early Villafranchian of Collepardo (central Italy)

The site of Collepardo (southern Latium, central Italy), located about 100 km southeast of Rome, has yielded several vertebrate remains coming from a complex sequence of travertines and breccias. The faunal assemblage, collected in the 1980s, was referred to the Middle Villafranchian (Gliozzi et al. 1997) for its similarities with Saint Vallier (France)(Cassoli & Segre Naldini 1993) or Montopoli (Italy) (Palombo et al. 2000-2002) FUs and consists of the following taxa: Stephanorhinus cf. S. jeanvireti, Equus stenonis, Sus sp., Leptobos sp., Hemitragus stehlini, Croizetoceros sp., Pseudodama lyra, Nyctereutes megamastoides, Acinonyx pardinensis and Megantereon cultridens. However, only the cervids were studied in detail (Segre Naldini & Valli 2004). In the last years several field surveys, as a joined effort of the Earth Science Department of “Sapienza University of Rome”, “IGAG CNR” and “Italian Institute of Human Palaeontology” (IsIPU), were conducted in order to better define the geological-stratigraphic setting of the area and possibly identify other outcrops. In 2015, several fossils were found embedded in a block of travertine, including the first documented remains in the Italian peninsula of the short-faced bear Agriotheriumcf. insigne (Ursidae, Carnivora) (Bellucci et al., 2019). This block was subsequently subjected to CT scan, allowing a non-invasive virtual extraction of the fossils (Fig. 1). Here, we describe the Suidae remains, represented by an incomplete neurocranium. The specimen is in a good state of conservation and preserves the posterior roots of the zygomatic arches, the skull roof, and the occipital region on both sides. Even if the suid collection from Collepardo was never described and/or figured, these remains were firstly referred to Sus sp. (Gliozzi et al. 1997) and subsequently to Sus arvernensis (Guérin & Tsoukala 2013), a small-sized Ruscinian to Early Villafranchian (MN14-15) species. The presence of S. arvernensis, together with the occurrences of Agriotherium cf. insigneand Pseudodama lyra strengthens a Pliocene (Early Villafranchian) age (Triversa FU) for the faunal assemblage, as supposed by Bellucci et al. (2019). The recent findings and the ongoing re-evaluation of old collections testify the remarkable value of the site of Collepardo in the Pliocene of the Euro-Mediterranean region.