The intriguing history of two elephant molariform teeth from Sardinia (Italy): which relationships between the lost tooth from Chiaramonti and the molar displayed at Civic Ozieri’s Archeological Museum?

Abstract

Thus far, a few moderately reduced-size mammoth remains have been reported from six Sardinian (Italy) sites, presumably ranging in age from the late Middle to the Late Pleistocene. All remains have been tentatively ascribed to a single endemic species, Mammuthus lamarmorai, but the uncertainties about the actual chronology of most of the remains, their minimal number, and some differences in their size hamper any attempt to infer the exact number of mammoth taxa that inhabited Sardinia and their evolutionary history. Therefore, even a single specimen might provide a piece of interesting information to answer open questions. This note aims to give notice of an elephant tooth found in the neighborhood of the Chiaramonti village (Sassari, Northwestern Sardinia), investigate its history from its first report to the disappearance of any information about its current collocation, and describe a quite large molariform tooth that was given by a donor to the archeological museum of the rather close village of Ozieri (Sassari). The morphology and morphometry of the Ozieri upper penultimate molar (M2) are more similar to, but not fully typical of, Mammuthus than Palaeoloxodon representatives. The tooth seems to belong to an elephant rather larger than the M. lamarmorai molar (M3) from that from San Giovanni di Sinis (Cabras, Oristano, central-western Sardinia). Its length, indeed, is comparable with the minimum length values of some continental representative of Mammuthus meridionalis and Mammuthus trogontherii. However, the similarity and principal component multivariate analyses indicate major affinity with the latter species. The lack of any information about the Chiaramonti molar and the unknown chronological setting of the molar stored at the Ozieri’s Civic Archeological Museum, further underline the scantiness of sound geologic s.l. and taphonomic data provided by most of the Sardinian specimens. Indeed, the exact provenance of some remains is unknown, while others were collected without paying any attention to the geological and depositional context or are currently lost, obscuring the evolutionary scenario of elephant populations in Sardinia.