Researchers excavate a Tapirus arvernensis skeleton at Camp dels Ninots in Girona, Spain, PC: Gerard Campeny / IPHES-CERCA
At the Camp dels Ninots site in Caldes de Malavella, near Girona in northeastern Spain, researchers have recovered a remarkably complete skeleton of a young tapir that died roughly 4 million years ago, when the region was still home to a humid subtropical landscape surrounding an ancient volcanic lake. The animal, estimated to have been about 1 year old, belongs to Tapirus arvernensis, an extinct species that lived across parts of Europe during the Pliocene. The discovery also brings the number of tapir individuals found at Camp dels Ninots to 7, making the site an exceptionally important record of this extinct European mammal.
Dr Bruno Gómez de Soler, an IPHES-CERCA researcher and co-director of the excavation, said the find provides an opportunity to study skeletal development, growth and other aspects of early life that are difficult to reconstruct from isolated fossil bones. Its bones were found largely connected in their original anatomical positions, preserving an unusually detailed record of a juvenile animal that would otherwise be extremely difficult to study. Researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution, or IPHES-CERCA, say the specimen is the most complete juvenile tapir skeleton ever recovered in Europe. Having several individuals from the same species and site also gives researchers an unusual opportunity to compare animals at different stages of development rather than relying on specimens recovered from unrelated locations.
Researchers hope those studies will clarify aspects of the animal’s development while also revealing more about the conditions that allowed its skeleton to survive for approximately 4 million years. Because their developing bones are more vulnerable to destruction, scattering and scavenging before burial, young animals are particularly difficult to preserve. Because Camp dels Ninots has produced tapirs of different ages, researchers can compare skeletal features across the population and begin reconstructing how these animals changed as they matured. Because it provides a rare opportunity to investigate growth and life history using fossils from the same geological setting, the combination of adults and juveniles is especially significant.
The juvenile skeleton gives researchers something adult specimens cannot: a direct record of a developing Tapirus arvernensis. The specimen will undergo further laboratory analysis after excavation, including detailed recording of the bones and examination of the surrounding sediment. The latest discovery strengthens Camp dels Ninots’ importance as a reference site for understanding Europe’s Pliocene tapirs. Finding multiple individuals from one exceptionally preserved environment allows researchers to study not only individual animals but also variation within a single population. Rather than being simply another isolated prehistoric skeleton, the newly recovered tapir adds another piece to an unusually detailed record of an extinct animal and the environment in which it lived.
Tapirus arvernensis was one of the tapir species that inhabited Europe before the animals eventually disappeared from the continent, leaving their modern relatives restricted mainly to Asia and the Americas.