A skeleton of Mammuthus trogontherii (Proboscidea, Elephantidae) from NW Peloponnese, Greece Athanassios Athanassiou Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Ephorate of PalaeoanthropologyeSpeleology, Ardittou 34B, 11636 Athens, Greece article info Article history: Available online 2 April 2011 abstract Fossil elephant remains were identified in Loussiká, NW Peloponnese, Southern Greece, when tusk fragments were recognized in a bulldozer backfill. An excavation carried out in 2001 and 2003 by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture revealed the partial skeleton of an adult male mammoth, referred to the Middle Pleistocene species Mammuthus trogontherii. The recovered material includes part of the skull, the complete mandible, several vertebrae and ribs, both scapulae, ulna, tibia, most carpal and tarsal bones, metapodials and phalanges. The metrical and anatomical study of the skeleton shows that the living individual was about 45 years old, stood about 3.80 m high and weighed about 8 t. M. trogontherii is a very rare species in Southern Europe. The Loussiká skeleton represents the first solid evidence of the species’ presence in Southern Greece and considerably expands to the south its palaeobiogeographic range in the Balkan area. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Elephant fossils are common in palaeontological sites, as their robust bones and their massive teeth have relatively good preserva- tion potential in the fossil record, even in relatively higher energy environments. This resulted in a fairly good fossil record, recovered from numerous localities, that contributed to the current under- standing of evolution and phylogeny within the family Elephantidae. In mainland Greece, the recorded fossil elephant-bearing local- ities are close to forty (Doukas and Athanassiou, 2003), commonly situated in fluvial and lacustrine basins. The straight-tusked elephant Elephas antiquus is the dominant species, present in more than twenty sites dated to the MiddleeLate Pleistocene (Doukas and Athanassiou, 2003; Tsoukala et al., 2010). Older, Lower Pleistocene localities have yielded numerous remains of the primitive mammoth Mammuthus meridionalis, often in association with the gomphothere Anancus arvernensis. More advanced mammoth finds are, however, very rare and they are geographically restricted to the northern part of Greece. The insular proboscidean faunas, known from more than thirty sites, are characterised by the presence of dwarf endemic forms, derived mainly from continental E. antiquus. The new site ‘Loussiká’, described in the present paper, is situ- ated in western Achaia, NW Peloponnese (Fig. 1). It was discovered in 1988 by the archaeologist Andreas Darlas, while prospecting the area around the village of Loussiká for prehistoric artefacts. There, in the southern slope of the Serdiní valley, he noticed the presence of tusk and bone fragments in a bulldozer backfill. The bulldozer, while levelling the ground for agricultural use, had cut across the proximal part of the skull, destroying the sole preserved right tusk, as well as an unknown number of bones. The site was excavated several years later, in 2001 and 2003, by the Ministry of Culture (Ephorate of PalaeoanthropologyeSpeleology, Athens, and ST’ Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Patras) under the direction of Dr. A. Darlas, with the participation of the present author. The excavation revealed a partial proboscidean skeleton that included the skull, the mandible, and part of the axial and appendicular skeleton. The recovered specimens were prepared in the laboratory of the Ephorate of PalaeoanthropologyeSpeleology in Athens and are currently stored in the collections of the Archaeological Museum of Patras. The skull still remains in Athens because of its fragility and demanding preparation, and it will be also transported to Patras when the preparation and consolidation are finished. The elephant skeleton of Loussiká is referred here to the Middle Pleistocene ‘steppe mammoth’ Mammuthus trogontherii (Pohlig, 1885). However, the finding was preliminarily referred to E. antiquus Falconer and Cautley, 1847 (Doukas and Athanassiou, 2003; Athanassiou, 2010), a quite common Pleistocene elephant species, mainly because of a misinterpretation of the skull morphology during the excavation (see Section 7). After the plaster jacket removal, the preliminary preparation and re-examination of the E-mail address: aathanas@geol.uoa.gr. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.03.030 Quaternary International 255 (2012) 9e28