The Italian record of latest Miocene continental vertebrates.

The present paper provides an overview on the latest Miocene Italian continental vertebrate fossil record, with special emphasis on the faunal turnovers and their paleogeographic significance. The Italian Miocene fossil record of terrestrial vertebrates is relatively poor. It increases only with the latest Miocene. The pre-Messinian Late Miocene land vertebrate localities of Italy belong to three distinct bioprovinces. Two of them are characterised by faunas with manifestly endemic features, attesting to the occurrence of isolated emerged areas (the Abruzzi-Apulia and the Tusco-Sardinian paleobioprovinces). The third paleobioprovince is testified by sites in Calabria and Sicily and is characterised by non-endemized mammals, counterparts of which were identified both in North Africa and Europe. By the Messinian, the Italian continental vertebrate record shows that the region underwent a major paleobiogeographic reorganization.