The Late Pleistocene Apennine Chamois from Grotta Mora Cavorsa (Simbruini Mountains, Central Italy)

Abstract

This paper describes a sub-entire, partially articulated skeleton of chamois found together with other vertebrate remains in a silty lens with limestone clasts between the 104 and 105 SSUU of Grotta Mora Cavorso (Latium, Italy). This silty lens is chronologically correlatable to a temperate oscillation of MIS 3. The skull and post-cranial remains from Grotta Mora Cavorso were compared with the fossil remains of chamois from numerous Late Pleistocene and older Holocene sites of Italy and of Pyrenees and Iberian Peninsula. Additional comparisons were made with large samples of extant chamois, Rupicapra pyrenaica ornata, R. pyrenaica pyrenaica and R. rupicapra rupicapra. Morphological and morphometric features of the skull and the horn-core, as well as other characters of the metacarpus suggest to refer the fossil remains from Grotta Mora Cavorso to Apennine chamois, R. pyrenaica ornata. This is the earliest ascertained record in Central-Southern Italy of the ornata-like chamois, a subspecies so far known with certainty only in the Holocene, or possibly in the Lateglacial