First discovery of a well-preserved skull of Ursus gr. thibetanus in the latest Pliocene of central Italy

A new skull of black bear, Ursus gr thibetanus, is described from the Late Pliocene of Poggio Rosso (Upper Valdarno, central Italy). The find extends the documented presence of the species during the Pliocene. In fact, black bears were believed to disappear from Europe in the course of the Middle Pliocene, during the faunal turnover marking the so called “Elephant-Equus event”. The black bear group survived in Asia and returned to Europe in the Middle Pleistocene, from which they definitively disappeared during the early Late Pleistocene. The discovery therefore proves that black bears, as other Early-Middle Villafranchian faunal components, actually survived the Elephant-Equus event and perhaps became marginal species of Late Villafranchian communities. The persistence of these early taxa has interesting paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatological implications.