Joan Madurell Malapeira

Autonomous University of Barcelona | UAB · Department of Geology

The late Villafranchian is one of the pivotal time-spans in the succession of Pleistocene European faunal assemblages, setting the bases for the major faunal renewal that characterized the continent during the Epivillafranchian. Bison is one of the most important and successful large mammals to spread in Europe at the latest stages of the Early Ple...

The region of Umbria (Central Italy) represents one of the most interesting areas for the study of Mediterranean Plio-Pleistocene mammal faunas due to the occurrence of numerous paleontological deposits. Most of the fossils have been discovered within the Tiberino Basin, which extends across the centre of the territory for ca. 1800 km 2 , and the s...

Late Pleistocene cave lions are one of the most iconic species of Northern Hemisphere Quaternary taphocoenoses. Despite their often-scarce record in cave environments, their ubiquitous distribution across Eurasia and North America assemblages attests to their position as top ice-age predators. Nevertheless, the origins of these former large felids,...

Camp dels Ninots (Caldes de Malavella, NE Spain) is one of the most remarkable Konservat- Lagerstätte of the European Pliocene. The site is located in la Selva depression, within the Catalan Volcanic Complex. The intense volcanic activity that characterized this area during the Pliocene led to the creation of the Camp dels Ninots maar lake (CN), an...

The study of European hippopotamus (recorded throughout the Quaternary from the Early to the Late Pleistocene) presents several unresolved questions and a lack of consensus among specialists. The number of identified taxa, their geographical and chronological distribution, and the palaeobiological changes in their populations are still hotly debate...

The taxonomy and phylogeny of the small to mid-sized Plio-Pleistocene cervids of Europe, commonly known as Dama-like deer, have been a matter of vast dispute, as specimens referred to this group have been attributed to multiple genera such as: Dama, Pseudodama, Axis, Euraxis, Rusa and Metacervocerus. Here we present a preliminary study of 305 cervi...

Homotherium was one of the most widely distributed felids, both geographically and chronologically. Records of this genus were found from the early Pliocene to the latest Late Pleistocene in Eurasia, Africa and America. Late Pleistocene Eurasian and American fossils, usually considered as representing two different species and well-known thanks to...

Since the pioneering works of Björn Kurtén from the middle of XX century, the Eurasian Early Pleistocene species Ursus etruscus is considered the putative ancestor of both cave and brown bears. However, in the last two decades the remains of the late Early Pleistocene has been in a hotly phylogenetic and taxonomic debate and several authors include...

Homotherium rappresenta uno dei generi di maggior successo del record fossile della famiglia Felidae, con amplissima distribuzione geografica e stratigrafica che spazia dall’Eurasia, all’Africa e all’America, dal Pliocene Inferiore fino alla fine del Pleistocene. Nonostante le popolazioni del Pleistocene Superiore dell’Eurasia e del Nord America si...

Among the so-called big cat species, leopards (Panthera pardus) are one of the most broadly geographically distributed today. Thanks to their versatility, they have a great capacity to adapt to distinct habitats. Nowadays, the geographical range of leopards spans from arid regions of Africa to forested areas in eastern Siberia. During the Middle to...

The late Oligocene genus Proailurus is generally accepted as the earliest member of the family Felidae. Later on, during the Miocene four different felid species are traditionally recognized and included in the paraphyletic genus Pseudaelurus: P. quadridentatus, P. romieviensis, P. lorteti, and P. turnauensis. More recently various authors have ass...

Umbria represents one of the most interesting areas for studying Pleistocene mammal faunas in Italy thanks to the great richness of fossiliferous sites distributed in all its territory. Most of the local faunal assemblages (LFAs) have been found in the Tiberino Basin, which extends over a large portion of the regional territory. Instead, in this wo...

Collecurti (Colfiorito Basin, Italy) is one of the few Early Pleistocene localities in Mediterranean Europe that records the Jaramillo subchron (1.07–0.99 Ma) and the core of the EMPT (Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition). The Collecurti mammal assemblage was selected as the reference for the homonymous Faunal Unit in the Italian large mammal bioch...

The Pliocene and Early Pleistocene three-toed horses of Western Eurasia (Caucasus, Anatolia, Balkans, Eastern and Central Europe, Italian and Iberian peninsulae and England) have been studied since the second half of the 19th Century, with the following taxa identified from several fossiliferous sites: “Hipparion” crassum, “Hipparion” rocinantis, “...

The present work describes the dentognathic remains of Ursus etruscus Cuvier, 1823 from the recently discovered Taurida cave in central Crimea at the north Black Sea area. The bone-bearing layer of Taurida cave corresponds to the Psekupsian Faunal Assemblage of Eastern Europe and to the Late Villafranchian of Western Europe (ca. 1.8–1.5 Ma). Here,...

La Vall del Têt és coneguda en el món de l'espeleologia per la gran quantitat de galeries subterrànies que es troben repartides en el complex de cavitats càrstiques format per Gorner, Fullà-Canaletes i Lachambre (Cornellà de Conflent, Occitània, França). Des del moment que un equip d'espeleòlegs i paleontòlegs de la Federació Catalana d’Espeleologi...

El Pleistocè inferior fou una època de profunds canvis en les tafocenosis europees probablement forçats pels canvis en la dinàmica orbital de la terra. Durant el vilafranquià les comunitats de grans carnívors mostren una gran diversitat i competència intraespecífica com es exemplificat als jaciments del complex Incarcal i Vallparadís Estació. Aquí...

Els útims 10 anys d’excavacions al Complex Incarcal del Pleistocè inferior terminal han proporcionat un gran nombre de restes de vertebrats de l’Epivilafranquià. Dos jaciments diferents han sigut excavats durant aquesta tercera etapa d’excavacions: Incarcal-I i Incarcal-V que presenten diferents patrons en l’abundància relativa de grans mamífers. E...

A new small-sized lynx from Longdan, Gansu Province, Lynx hei sp. nov., is described in this study. The new species displays the characteristic Lynx generic traits, e.g., distinct buccal grooves in the upper canine, presence of anterior groove in the upper canine, absence of the P2, and moderately developed mastoid process, but it is markedly small...

During 2011, an international team of scientists successfully obtained for the first-time paleoDNA data from different samples of Lynx remains from the Iberian Peninsula. These results showed that these remains belonged to the species Lynx pardinus, which is, at present, one of the most critically endangered felids. One of the remains sampled in th...

Els Casots is one of the richest fossil vertebrate sites of the Vallès-Penedès Basin (Catalonia, Spain). It was discovered in 1989 and excavated briefly during the 1990s, resulting in the recovery of thousands of remains and the erection of several new mammal species. Excavations were resumed in 2018 and continue to date. Here we provide updated re...

Recent field surveys performed in the newly-discovered Taurida Cave (Crimea, Russia, Late Villafranchian, 1.8–1.5 Ma) enabled us to unearth dentognathic remains of the dirk-toothed cat Megantereon. Here we describe in detail the recovered remains further comparing it anatomically and biometrically with coeval Eurasian and African sites. The perform...

Among the vertebrates found at Cava Monticino, carnivorans are by far the most abundant of all the large mammals. Five different taxa were recovered: one felid, two hyaenids, one canid, and one mustelid. The small-sized felid remains can be attributed to Felis christoli and seems to represent one of the earliest records of a true member of the genu...

A new Pleistocene hyena den, located into the Réseau Lachambre karstic complex (Têt Valley; Eastern Pyrenees), is here presented. Sylvie 1 is an accessory cavity of the former network with a documented large mammal assemblage putatively corresponding to the Late Pleistocene and mainly dominated by Crocuta spelaea. The majority of the studied bones...

Among macrovertebrates found at Cava Monticino, carnivorans are by far the most numerous in terms of abundance of their records. Five different taxa were recovered: one felid, two hyaenids, one canid and one mustelid. The smallsized felid remains can be attributed to Felis cf. christoli and thus seem to represent one of the earliest records of a tr...

The carnivore guild of the Early Pleistocene site of Dmanisi is among the most diverse of the Early Pleistocene of the entire Old World. It includes 14 carnivoran taxa: Homotherium latidens, Megantereon whitei, Panthera onca georgica, Acinonyx pardinensis, Lynx issiodorensis; Pachycrocuta brevirostris; Canis (Xenocyon) lycaonoides, Canis borjgali,...

Late Early Pleistocene vertebrate assemblages in the Mediterranean area have sparked the interest of the scientific community in the last two decades mainly thanks to the discovery of fossils and/or stone tools testifying to the presence of early Homo. However, our knowledge of most of these assemblages is biased by the lack of well-constrained chr...

The renowned site of Dmanisi in Georgia, southern Caucasus (ca. 1.8 Ma) yielded the earliest direct evidence of hominin presence out of Africa. In this paper, we report on the first record of a large-sized canid from this site, namely dentognathic remains, referable to a young adult individual that displays hypercarnivorous features (e.g., the redu...

The Pliocene record of genus Vulpes Frisch, 1775 in Eurasia is scarce, coming from few sparse locali-ties. The lack of a comprehensive and integrated revision led to the description of numerous different taxa, often only tentatively related to extant species but not with one another. Çalta-1 is an important Pliocene site located in the Anatolian re...

Extant red fox, Vulpes vulpes (Linnaeus, 1757), is a small- to medium-sized mesocarnivorous canid whose earliest records are reported to the early Middle Pleistocene in Europe. Its origin has always been related to the Early Pleistocene European Vulpes alopecoides (Del Campana, 1913), for the numerous comparable morphological and morphometric featu...

The pardel lynx, Lynx pardinus, is considered one of the most threatened living felids, currently distributed in restricted areas of the Iberian Peninsula. The evolutionary history of this medium-sized felid, as well as its relationships with the Middle-Late Pleistocene “cave lynx” from Mediterranean Europe, have fuelled a decades-long debate among...

Bison is one of the most common genera of artiodactyls of the Quaternary. Although during the last century a large number of Bison remains has been discovered and several species have been erected, the evolutionary history of this group remains unclear. Nowadays, it is commonly accepted that Bison is sister to Leptobos, a mid-sized bovine represent...

The latest Early Pleistocene (Epivillafranchian; 1.2-0.8 Ma) is one of the best-known geological periods in the Iberian Peninsula thanks to the abundance of chronologically well-known sites as well as for their species diversity. Among these sites, the most remarkable are: the Vallparadís Section (ca. 1.2-0.6 Ma), the Incarcal complex (ca. 0.8 Ma),...

We describe small-sized specimens of the metailurine felid Dinofelis from a new Plio-Pleistocene site in North Africa. Dinofelis is a genus of saber-toothed cats mainly recorded from East and South Africa with numerous leopard to jaguar-sized species. The described specimens, clearly smaller than all the other African Dinofelis, resemble isolated r...

The dispersal of the genus Hippopotamus from Africa to Europe in the Early Pleistocene has been widely discussed in the last decades. Most authors propose a single entry of forms similar to the African species Hippopotamus gorgops, named H. antiquus upon entering Europe. However, other authors propose a first entry of forms similar to the African t...

Hippos are continental mammals largely dependent on the aquatic environment. The presence of these animals in a number of European archaeo-paleontological sites informs us on the environmental conditions in the past. However, many questions are yet to be resolved regarding the arrivals of these mammals of African origin to Europe and their phylogen...

The evolutionary history of Bison is a matter of debate due to the scarcity of fossil remains from the earliest members of this clade and the close morphological similarities among species. To clarify the taxonomic status of the earliest stouter bison and their relationships to their putative ancestor, Leptobos, as well as other primitive forms tra...

The site of Venta Micena (Orce, Spain), c. 1.6 Ma, preserves one the best paleontological records of the early Pleistocene large mammals fauna in Europe. Here we describe the specimens of the genus Canis Linnaeus, 1758 in the context of the late Villafranchian and Epivillafranchian fossil dogs from Eurasia. Anatomical and metric data suggest that t...

The pardel lynx Lynx pardinus is today restricted to small populations living in southern Iberian Peninsula. However, this endangered species was widely spread throughout Iberia until historical times and is currently the subject of intense conservation programs. Paleontological data suggest that its past geographical range was much wider, includin...

Dentognathic remains of European Middle Pleistocene Vulpini are scarce and fragmentary. They have classically been attributed to several species, but many taxonomic and phylogenetic uncertainties remain. Here we describe a fox well-preserved maxilla with associated mandible from the Middle Pleistocene layers of the Vallparadís Section (EVT3; ca. 0....

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The renowned site of Dmanisi in Georgia, southern Caucasus (ca. 1.8 Ma) yielded the earliest direct evidence of hominin presence out of Africa. In this paper, we report the first record of a large-sized canid from this site, namely dentognathic remains, referable to a young adult individual that displays hypercarnivorous features (e.g., the reducti...

During the Last Glacial cycle (from MIS-4 to MIS-2), the isthmic Pyrenees mountain range acted as a biogeographical barrier, effectively restricting faunal exchanges to its western and eastern terminations. The study of the composition of megaherbivore communities has revealed the transitional character of the Cantabrian region (northwest Iberian P...

Fossil foxes, genus Vulpes, are known since the Late Miocene of North America and the Old World but their record is utterly scarce, fragmentary, and referred to a number of different species, often of uncertain affinity. Although the European Pleistocene fossil record of foxes is relatively more abundant, several species were described on the basis...

Grotte de la Carrière is one of the secondary caves with paleontological record within the Réseau Lachambre karstic complex, an important network located in the Têt Valley at Villefranche-de-Conflent (Occitaine, France). After the discovery of dozens of cave bear remains in 2012, four systematical excavations in different parts of the cave allowed...

The Vallparadís composite section (VCS) includes the nearby paleontological sites of Cal Guardiola and Vallparadís Estació (Vallès-Penedès Basin, northeastern Iberian Peninsula). The section spans from before the Jaramillo subchron to the early Middle Pleistocene (ca. 1.2-0.6 Ma). In this study, we describe the suid record from VCS and we review th...

We report on the taxonomy and paleodiet of the bear population that inhabited the emblematic palaeoanthropological Early Pleistocene (1.8 Ma) site of Dmanisi (Georgia), based on a dual approach combining morphometrics and microwear of upper and lower teeth. Given that the teeth of Ursus etruscus Cuvier, 1823 from Dmanisi show considerable size vari...

The Vallparadís composite section includes the paleontological sites of Cal Guardiola and Vallparadís Estació, respectively located in the western and eastern bank of the Torrent de Vallparadís (Terrassa, Catalonia, NE Spain). The Vallparadís section spans from before the Jaramillo subchron to the early Middle Pleistocene (ca. 1.2–0.6 Ma). It inclu...

The Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (EMPT) (ca. 1.4–0.4 Ma) represents a fundamental transformation in the Earth's climate state, starting at 1.4 Ma with a progressive increase in the amplitude of climatic oscillations and the establishment of strong asymmetry in global ice volume cycles. The progressive shift from a 41kyr–100kyr orbital rhythm...

RESUMEN España es el país con mayor número de yacimientos bien conservados, cantidad y calidad de fósiles de todo el continente europeo. Aquí se describe el patrimonio paleobiológico correspondiente al Plio-Pleistoceno (últimos 5,3 millones de años) registrado en los principales yacimientos con presencia de fósiles de grandes mamíferos de la Peníns...

The Vallès-Penedès Basin is a classical area for the study Miocene terrestrial faunas of Europe. However, in comparison to the middle and late Miocene part of the record, the early Miocene has deserved little attention. Indeed most of the currently known sites were discovered more than 60 years ago and have not been systematically sampled again. Ne...

The chronology of the first human dispersal out of Africa and the ecological role of the genus Homo in Europe as a scavenger or an active hunter during the late Early Pleistocene are two of the paleoanthropological topics most hotly debated during the last decades. The earliest human occurrences in Western Europe are recorded in the Iberian Peninsu...

The Miocene record of the Vallès-Penedès Basin (NE of the Iberian Peninsula) has provided a rich and diverse herpetofauna (amphibians and reptiles), which is known in the literature since the early 20th Century, thanks to the pioneering work of Bergounioux and, subsequently, Crusafont and Hoffstetter. However, the early Miocene localities have rece...

The Vallès-Penedès Basin is a classical area for the study of the Miocene terrestrial faunas of Europe. However, in comparison to the middle and late Miocene part of the record, the early Miocene has received less attention. Indeed, most of the currently-known sites were discovered more than 60 years ago and have not been systematically sampled sin...