Late Pleistocene and Holocene chamois in Italy

Abstract

Two species of chamois currently live in Italy: Rupicapra rupicapra, with the subspecies Rupicapra rupicapra rupicapra, the Alpine chamois, and Rupicapra pyrenaica, with the subspecies Rupicapra pyrenaica ornata, the Apennine chamois. Late Pleistocene and Holocene remains of chamois are numerous, but those attributable with reasonable certainty at the species or subspecies level are few and are mostly poorly dated. The recent finding of a sub‐complete partially articulated skeleton of chamois attributed to Rupicapra pyrenaica ornata, from Late Pleistocene sediments of Grotta Mora Cavorso (Simbruini Mountains, central Italy), provides new data and insights on the taxonomy and distribution of the genus Rupicapra in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene of Italy. Indeed, so far this subspecies was known with certainty only from Holocene and, possibly, in Lateglacial deposits. From the current state of knowledge, it seems that the populations of southern chamois (Iberian and Apennine chamois), which had been living in Western Europe since the Middle Pleistocene, were separated by a dispersal wave of northern chamois (Alpine chamois) at least as far back as the latest Middle Pleistocene, earlier than previously thought. The hypothesis of the anthropochorous origin of the extant chamois population of Abruzzo appears no longer to be convincing: the Iberian chamois allegedly imported from Spain to southern Italy during the 18th and 19th Centuries do not appear to have contributed to the genetic heritage of the extant Apennine chamois.