The Abruzzo-Apulian (Central and Southeastern Italy) fossil fauna, new challenges for paleontologists and paleobiogeographers

The Abruzzo-Apulian Platform was an endemic Neogene paleobioprovince. Its relics can be found at the south-east of the Italian Peninsula. Geological and paleontological traces of this past land crop out both in the central Apennines, Maiella (Scontrone fossiliferous site), as well as in the Gargano Promontory. The Scontrone paleofauna -Scontrone is placed on the southern borderline of the Abruzzo National Park, Central-Southern Apennine. The bone-bearing sediments are coastaltidal-flat calcarenites stratigraphically dated to the Lower Tortonian. They yielded remains of terrestrial mammals, which include the bizarre ruminant Hoplitomeryx and the giant insectivore Deinogalerix, of a large terrestrial bird, and of large crocodilians and chelonians. At present, Hoplitomeryx, Deinogalerix and the crocodilians represent the elements in common with the Gargano community. The fauna is endemic and quite unbalanced. Six species of Hoplitomeryx have been described until now, but other species are adding to the list as new specimens are being freed from the calcarenites. Deinogalerix seems also represented by more than a single species. No mammal carnivores nor small mammals were found until now. The Gargano paleofauna - A very diversified endemic fauna is contained in soil deposits (Terre Rosse) that fill an extensive karst system at the north-western slopes of Mount Gargano (Southern Italy). The fossil assemblages include both large and small mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, and are highly unbalanced. The small mammal component is mainly made of rodents, lagomorphs, and insectivores. Larger mammalian taxa are less abundant and are represented by Hoplitomericidae, Deinogalerix. And the sea otter Paralutra garganensis. The fissure fillings have been arranged in a biochronological sequence based on their different faunal composition and evolutionary degree. During the time period documented by the fissure deposits the faunal diversity changed and several taxa underwent significant evolutionary modifications, giving rise to numerous adaptive radiations. Taxa weakly- or non-modified compared to their continental counterparts characterize the oldest assemblages. They likely represent the youngest dispersal phase from the mainland into the insular domain, suggesting a polyphasic origin of the community.Evidence of apparently the oldest faunal settlement in Gargano was found in the recently discovered fissure M013. It contains remains of a new murid, which is manifestly the ancestor of Mikrotia (the endemic and widespread murid of the Terre Rosse), together with those of a new Cricetodontinae, which resembles primitive early Miocene representatives. These occurrences, in addition to the absence of Apodemus and Prolagus, two ubiquitous taxa of the Terre Rosse fillings, confirm that the assemblages are the result of a set of successive bioevents. The age and paleogeography of Scontrone and Gargano: the Abruzzo-Apulian domain - The Early Tortonian age of the Scontrone fauna is unequivocally proven not only by solid geologic evidence, but also by the Hoplitomeryx representatives, which are comparatively more primitive than their Gargano counterparts. The same might apply to the Deinogalerix specimens from the two localities, but analyses are still under way to check this aspect. The Gargano fissure fillings are tentatively dated to the Late Miocene on the basis of paleontological inferences, namely the occurrence of Apodemus, which is supposed to be not older than MN12 in the European mainland. The Gargano’s younger age possibly reflects the fact that the Gargano palaeo-islands formed stable structural high, while the Scontrone area was involved in the Apennine build-up and gradually sunk. Thus, the faunas from Scontrone and Gargano represent two different time slices within the same bioprovince. The colonization of the Abruzzo-Apulia domain - The existence, from the Late Oligocene to the Langhian, of a trans-Adriatic structural high between Dalmatia and the Gargano Peninsula, through the present day Tremiti Islands, was ascertained based on the seismostratigraphic analysis of more than 6000 kilometers of reflection seismic profiles from the Adriatic offshore, but also on several tens of deep wells. The major 29-30 Ma global sea-level fall caused the generalized surfacing of this structure across the Adriatic. The trans-Adriatic isthmus was originally in the form of stripe of land. Then, as the sea level turned growing at the transition to the Early Miocene, the structural high likely gave rise to an archipelago of gradually shrinking islands. The isthmus definitively sank at the end of the Langhian, i.e. around 14.8 Ma, and the Abruzzo-Apulian area remained cut off from any near mainland for the next 7 million years. Dalmatia and the Gargano were connected again during the Messinian sea lowstand. Thereafter, the sea level turned gradually to rise again, at first isolating the Abruzzo-Apulian area and then finally submerging it entirely at the very end of the Messinian. The possible ways of colonization used by the Messinian colonizers is still passionately debated. Although many steps have been made in the direction of improving our understanding of the history of the Abruzzo-Apulian Platform and of its faunal communities, yet many issues are still unanswered. Settling these issues will not only give us a better insight into the development of the Abruzzo-Apulian faunas per se, but will also lead us to a better understanding of the geo– and biodynamics of paleoislands in general

Water adsorption on amorphous silica surfaces: A Car-Parrinello simulation study

A combination of classical molecular dynamics (MD) and ab initio Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics (CPMD) simulations is used to investigate the adsorption of water on a free amorphous silica surface. From the classical MD SiO_2 configurations with a free surface are generated which are then used as starting configurations for the CPMD.We study the reaction of a water molecule with a two-membered ring at the temperature T=300K. We show that the result of this reaction is the formation of two silanol groups on the surface. The activation energy of the reaction is estimated and it is shown that the reaction is exothermic.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, to be published in J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Reappraisal of some species of the giant galericine Deinogalerix (Mammalia, Eulipotyphla, Erinaceomorpha, Erinaceidae) from the Miocene of south-eastern Italy, with a review of the genus

A revision of the remains of Deinogalerix from the Terre Rosse of Gargano, stored at the Department of Earth Sciences of Florence, improved our knowledge of the genus. The goals of this study are to clear the taxonomic status of the specimens and to tackle several issues connected with the evolutionary relationships of the different species. The sample of dental remains of Deinogalerix freudenthali provides new information, which confirms that this species belongs to the most primitive members of the genus, alongside D. masinii. It is now clear that D. freudenthali is very close to the hypothetical ancestor of all other Gargano species, except D. masinii. Nonetheless, the oldest fissures of the Gargano Terre Rosse contain also primitive species of unsettled taxonomic and phylogenetic position. The present analysis shows the systematic validity of D. minor and D. intermedius, whose status was debated. Moreover, the study verifies the consistency of the two phyletic lineages Deinogalerix minor–D. brevirostris and Deinogalerix intermedius–D. koenigswaldi, as well as the co-occurrence of members of the two lines at least in the most recent Terre Rosse fissures. The enhanced information contributes to our understanding of the genus Deinogalerix and especially of the most ancient phases of colonisation of the Apulia Platform. Nonetheless, the fossil record of the genus remains imperfect, with many gaps blurring the origins of its various evolutionary lines

Validity and reliability of the Structured Clinical Interview for Depersonalization-Derealization Spectrum (SCI-DER).

This study evaluates the validity and reliability of a new instrument developed to assess symptoms of depresonalization: the Structured Clinical Interview for the Depersonalization-Derealization Spectrum (SCI-DER). The instrument is based on a spectrum model that emphasizes soft-signs, sub-threshold syndromes as well as clinical and subsyndromal manifestations. Items of the interview include, in addition to DSM-IV criteria for depersonalization, a number of features derived from clinical experience and from a review of phenomenological descriptions. Study participants included 258 consecutive patients with mood and anxiety disorders, 16.7% bipolar I disorder, 18.6% bipolar II disorder, 32.9% major depression, 22.1% panic disorder, 4.7% obsessive compulsive disorder, and 1.5% generalized anxiety disorder; 2.7% patients were also diagnosed with depersonalization disorder. A comparison group of 42 unselected controls was enrolled at the same site. The SCI-DER showed excellent reliability and good concurrent validity with the Dissociative Experiences Scale. It significantly discriminated subjects with any diagnosis of mood and anxiety disorders from controls and subjects with depersonalization disorder from controls. The hypothesized structure of the instrument was confirmed empirically

Regulatory peptides in the urinary bladder of two genera of Antarctic Teleosts

Somatostatin 14, prolactin, atrial natriuretic peptide, galanin and urotensin II were found using immunohistochemistry in the urinary bladders of the Antarctic \uaeshes Trematomus bernacchii (Nototheniidae) and Chionodraco hamatus (Channichthyidae) caught in the Ross Sea. The urinary bladders of the two species showed a dierent histology in the epithelial layer. In T. bernacchii the epithelium comprises a single type of columnar cells, while in C. hamatus the columnar cells are restricted to the ventral portion of the bladder, and the dorso-lateral region is lined by cuboidal cells. No dierence in the intensity of the immunostaining was observed in the two cell types; the only variation was a dierent distribution of the immunoreactions, which were present in the whole cytoplasm in the cuboidal cells and restricted to the apical and/or basal portion of the columnar cells

Regularized Estimation of High-Dimensional Vector AutoRegressions with Weakly Dependent Innovations

There has been considerable advance in understanding the properties of sparse regularization procedures in high-dimensional models. In time series context, it is mostly restricted to Gaussian autoregressions or mixing sequences. We study oracle properties of LASSO estimation of weakly sparse vector-autoregressive models with heavy tailed, weakly dependent innovations with virtually no assumption on the conditional heteroskedasticity. In contrast to current literature, our innovation process satisfy an $L^1$ mixingale type condition on the centered conditional covariance matrices. This condition covers $L^1$-NED sequences and strong ($\alpha$-) mixing sequences as particular examples

Yurinskii's Coupling for Martingales

Yurinskii's coupling is a popular theoretical tool for non-asymptotic distributional analysis in mathematical statistics and applied probability, offering a Gaussian strong approximation with an explicit error bound under easily verified conditions. Originally stated in $\ell^2$-norm for sums of independent random vectors, it has recently been extended both to the $\ell^p$-norm, for $1 \leq p \leq \infty$, and to vector-valued martingales in $\ell^2$-norm, under some strong conditions. We present as our main result a Yurinskii coupling for approximate martingales in $\ell^p$-norm, under substantially weaker conditions than those previously imposed. Our formulation further allows for the coupling variable to follow a more general Gaussian mixture distribution, and we provide a novel third-order coupling method which gives tighter approximations in certain settings. We specialize our main result to mixingales, martingales, and independent data, and derive uniform Gaussian mixture strong approximations for martingale empirical processes. Applications to nonparametric partitioning-based and local polynomial regression procedures are provided.Comment: 55 pages, 1 figur

Data organization using gis for a more conscious conservation approach for abandoned sites

The purpose of this paper is to rediscover the abandoned village of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni with new tools and modalities, providing an overall descriptive picture of the context in the framework of a pressing marginalization of territories subjected to depopulation and abandonment, and providing the appropriate tools for the definition of a possible future scenario for the village. The main novelty of this work is proposing alternative data recording and management strategies, preparatory to the definition of an actual project. The proposed strategy blends modern documentation technology and ICT processing tools with the consultation of more traditional sources of information, encouraging the adoption of a highly analytical structure in the design process. The paper, which brings a practical example, aims to support the implementation of interventions that are conscious, and targeted to the needs of future users and actors in the development of these places. Finally, the work aims at exploring the pros of offline and online GIS database in the case of historic sites through the development of shareable maps able to store multiple information

NEW LIGHT ON PARASOREX DEPERETI (ERINACEOMORPHA: ERINACEIDAE: GALERICINI) FROM THE LATE MESSINIAN (MN 13) OF THE MONTICINO QUARRY (BRISIGHELLA, FAENZA, ITALY)

A large-sized species of Parasorex is common in the MN 13 mammal assemblages from the uppermost Messinian sandy-marly fissure fillings within the Gessoso Solfifera Formation at Brisighella (Northern Apennine). This erinaceid has been classified as Galerix sp. in the first papers on the Brisighella fauna. Later, it was described in detail in an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation by Fanfani (1999), who referred it to Galerix depereti. Van den Hoek Ostende (2001) included G. depereti in the genus Parasorex, Parasorex depereti has been described by Crochet (1986) on scarce material from a few Early Pliocene (MN 14–15) localities of southern France and Spain. Parasorex cf. depereti has been reported from the Early Pliocene fauna of Capo Mannu (Mandriola, Sardinia; Furió and Angelone 2010). The species seems actually distributed in south-western Europe, where it represents the youngest occurrence of the genus Parasorex. The very abundant sample of P. depereti from fissure filling BRS 25 enables a more accurate and comprehensive description of the species. It also permits inspection of the mesial elements of the dentition, which were lacking in the material examined by Crochet (1986). The systematic position of the species has been revisited and compared with those of other Galericini of the Parasorex group