Evaluando las evidencias más antiguas de la tortuga mora en la península ibérica en el Turtle Evolution Symposium 2021

En el recientemente celebrado Turtle Evolution Symposium 2021 se han presentado los restos más antiguos documentados de la tortuga mora (Testudo graeca) de la península ibérica. Los restos corresponden a tres espaldares recuperados como ajuar en dos enterramientos procedentes de la ciudad romana de Valentia, la actual Valencia. En la comunicación se habló del origen de la especie y de la importancia del hallazgo para el desarrollo de hipótesis sobre el significado y la funcionalidad de los restos.

El resumen de la comunicación es el siguiente:

The Testudo graeca (i.e., Greek tortoise or spur-thighed tortoise) origin in Western Europe is a subject of debate within the scientific community. The species is part of the current Spanish biodiversity, with three isolated populations, located in the south-eastern (Almeria and Murcia, Spain) and south-western (Doñana National Park, Spain) areas of the Iberian Peninsula, and in the Mallorca Island (Balearic Islands, Spain). Over the last two decades, mitochondrial DNA sequencing studies of Iberian and North African populations of the species have offered results that point to the area of Oran, in northern Algeria, as that in with the Iberian lineage originated. This data, combined with coalescence-based demographic analysis and revisions of the Iberian paleontological and archaeozoological record, have led researchers to propose the arrival of the species to the south-eastern region of the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the last glacial process (Würm), approximately 20,000 years ago. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, putative references to the presence of Testudo graeca in the Iberian palaeontological and archaeozoological records were relatively common. However, many of them were refuted in subsequent papers and, those that were not, are now considered doubtful. The aim of this work is to present and describe the oldest indisputable remains of Testudo graeca in the Iberian Peninsula. They correspond to several individuals, hitherto unpublished, found in Plaza Marqués de Busianos 5, a site in Valencia (eastern Spain) dated between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. We assess whether these finds support the presence of Testudo graeca in the Iberian biodiversity of the 1st or 2nd centuries AD or if, on the contrary, the analysed remains correspond to specimens brought from abroad to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans.

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Más información:

• Referencia: Boneta Jiménez, I., Pérez-García and Liesau von Lettow-Vorbeck, C. 2021. The oldest evidence of Testudo graeca in the Iberian Peninsula. PE-APA 21(R2) – Book of Abstracts, R8.
• Imagen: Imagen tomada durante la presentación del trabajo.