New remains of a primitive badger from Cueva de los Toriles (Carrizosa, Castilla-La Mancha, Iberian Peninsula) suggest a new quaternary locality in the Southern Iberian Plateau

Abstract

The Cueva de Los Toriles belongs to a karstic system found in the southern Iberian plateau. Construction works in the cave (not related to paleontological activities) have allowed for the recovery of fossil remains of macromammals, including two lower molars of a mustelid that are presented in this work. They can be attributed to the species Meles cf. thorali based on morphological and morphometric comparisons. This extinct mustelid is known mostly from Villafranchian deposits of France, Spain, and Greece spanning from the late Pliocene potentially, even reaching with some doubts the Early-Middle Pleistocene of France. Therefore, according to the presence of this badger in the cave, we could tentatively assume a chronological age ranging from the Late Pliocene to the Middle Pleistocene, chronologies that would be consistent with some lithic tools found in the cave. We highlight the importance of Cueva de Los Toriles for the Quaternary Paleontology of the southern Iberian plateau, one of the places from the Iberian Peninsula with a more limited fossil record from these chronologies.