Pliocene Anancus arvernensis (Croizet & Jobert, 1828) remains from Cetona (Siena): stratigraphy, chronology and paleoenvironment

Remains of Anancus arvernensis have been discovered in the site of Le Lame, on the eastern slope of Mt. Cetona. The remains come from within beach and lagoon deposits that delimited the Cetona Mountain to the east when it constituted an island rising for a few hundred metres above sea level. The remains, for which we present the dimensional data, belongs to a single animal that died close to the beach and that was later disarticulated by erosional processes. It is a common species of the Triversa Faunal Unit, that characterises the early Villafranchian although it is also found in older (Turolian-Ruscinian) and younger assemblages (up to the Olivola Faunal Unit). The stratigraphic setting of the remains allows their attribution to the Triversa Faunal Unit, at the end of the early Pliocene-beginning of the Middle Pliocene or to a slightly earlier Mammal Unit.