Occurrence of Theropithecus sp. in the Late Villafranchian of Southern Italy and implication for Early Pleistocene ‘‘out of Africa’’ dispersals Lorenzo Rook a, * , Bienvenido Martı´nez-Navarro b , F. Clark Howell c a Department of Earth Sciences and Museum of Geology and Paleontology, Universita ` di Firenze, via G. La Pira 4, 50121 Firenze (Italy) b ICREA, Grup d’Autoecologia Humana, A ` rea de Prehisto `ria, Un. Ass. CSIC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Pl. Imperial Tarraco, 1, 43005, Tarragona c Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 3060 Valley Life Sciences Building, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA Received 16 March 2004; accepted 2 August 2004 Abstract Three cervical vertebrae of a large primate have been identified in the revision of the faunal assemblage collected during the late ’70s from fissure fillings in the area known as Pirro Nord in southern Italy. By size the three vertebrae are comparable to the large fossil species Theropithecus oswaldi, however we prefer here to attribute the remains to Theropithecus sp. The Pirro Nord Theropithecus represents the second finding outside of Africa of this genus in association with Megantereon whitei, after the site of ‘Ubeidiya. The biochronology of Pirro Nord faunal assemblage demonstrates that the arrival into Europe of Theropithecus occurred earlier than thought: in the range of approx 1.6e1.3 Ma. The identification of an European ‘‘African assemblage’’ (Theropithecus associated with Megantereon whitei) has consequences for interpretation of an ‘‘out of Africa’’ (genus Homo) event around the Plio-Pleistocene transition. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Theropithecus; Cervical vertebrae; Early Pleistocene; Italy; Dispersal events * Corresponding author. Tel: C39 055 2757520; fax: C39 055 218628. E-mail addresses: Lrook@geo.unifi.it (L. Rook), bmarnav@prehistoria.urv.es (B. Martı´nez-Navarro), fchlhes@socrates.Berkeley. edu (F. Clark Howell). 0047-2484/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.08.001 Journal of Human Evolution 47 (2004) 267e277