Ricerc@Sapienza

Suidae are a family of mammals capable to adapt fast to environmental fluctuations, evolving through changes in size and morphology. From a palaeoentological perspective these changes are of remarkable value in providing biochronological constraints and new insights on palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. Fossil Suidae are widely employed for these purposes, especially in the African Neogene-Quaternary, where they assume a pivotal importance in our comprehension of the tempo and mode of human evolution. However, in Europe the potential of this group has been underestimated due to a historical bias. Precisely, European fossil suids have been recovered from the beginning of the 1800s, but since careful excavation protocols were established only later, several times remains of different species have been mixed together. The so-created "chimeras" generated confusion in the classification of the group and led to the establishment of a vicious circle that has negatively affected the use of suids for biochronology and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, as well as the comprehension of their evolution in the first place. To overcome these limitations a thorough re-evaluation of the European material is needed.
In this project, which will be co-funded by two grants of the European Commission under the SYNTHESYS+ project (ES-TAF-2677; DE-TAF-59), I will study specimens housed in several European institutions in order to undertake:
1) a systematic revision of the genera Propotamochoerus and Hippopotamodon (= Microstonyx);
2) an evaluation of the variability of Sus scrofa.
These are two important steps towards the goal of a suids European Neogene-Quaternary biochronological scale (i.e. a relative dating tool for the last twenty million years).