Papers by Josep Antoni Alcover
Zootaxa, 2017
A new species of extinct bullfinch, Pyrrhula crassa n. sp., is described from bones found in Furn... more A new species of extinct bullfinch, Pyrrhula crassa n. sp., is described from bones found in Furna do Calcinhas, a small cave situated at Caldeira, a volcano located in the southeastern portion of the Graciosa Island (Azores archipelago, North Atlantic Ocean). It is the first extinct passerine bird to be described from this archipelago. Both skull and post-cranial bones are larger in the new species than in its relatives, the Eurasian Bullfinch (P. pyrrhula) and the Azores Bullfinch or “Priolo” from São Miguel Island (P. murina), the new species being the largest known in this genus. The morphology of its humerus and the estimated wing length and surface area seem to indicate a flying ability similar to that of the extant P. murina. The possible sources of colonization of the genus into Azores, causes and chronology of extinction of the new species are discussed
Lluc Revista De Cultura I D Idees, 1976
Aura, J.E., Jorda Pardo, J.F., Morales, J.V., Perez Ripoll, M., Villalba, M.P. y Alcover, J.A. (2... more Aura, J.E., Jorda Pardo, J.F., Morales, J.V., Perez Ripoll, M., Villalba, M.P. y Alcover, J.A. (2009): Prehistoric Economy of Iberian Mediterranean Region, Spain (ca. 12000 – 7000 BP). Before Farming, The archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gathere
Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
ABSTRACT
Resum S'ha trobat per primera volta al Pliocè de Menorca (Illes Balears) el gènere extingit de di... more Resum S'ha trobat per primera volta al Pliocè de Menorca (Illes Balears) el gènere extingit de discoglòssid Latonia. Ha estat detectat a Punta Nati 6 i Punta Nati 12, dues localitats d'origen càrstic que es poden datar al Pliocè, però en canvi no s'ha trobat al Pleistocè de Menorca ni de cap altra de les Balears. La Latonia insular menorquina probablement representa una espècie no baptiada, però els seus elements cranians més diagnòstics encara no s'han trobat. Al Pleistocè de Mallorca i Menorca s'han trobat representants de gran mida del gènere Discoglossus. No obstant això, les dades moleculars i paleontològiques indiquen que la línia evolutiva de Discoglossus no prové directament de cap Latonia del Neògen. Menorca va mantenir durant el Pliocè una condició insular, i la Latonia de Menorca podria ser o bé un antic nadiu pre-messinià o bé un immigrant messinià. A llavors, les presències successives de Latonia i Discoglossus a les Illes Balears probablement representen esdeveniments diferents d'immigració i extinció.
Analysis of pellets of European Shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii collected at a non-br... more Analysis of pellets of European Shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii collected at a non-breeding roost site in southern Mallorca identified 36 species of fish prey, belonging to 27 genera and to 16 families. This diversity is higher than in the diet of P. a. aristotelis in the Atlantic, and higher than in the previous literature for P. a. desmarestii in the Mediterranean. European Shags in southern Mallorca foraged mainly on fishes with a mean estimated length of 11.6 cm (84.1% ranging from 6.1–15.0 cm in estimated length), most being pelagic species (59.6 %). The most important fish in numerical frequency (43.9%) and estimated biomass (37.2%) was the Bogue Boops boops (Sparidae). This species has not been reported in European Shag diet in the Atlantic, and its importance was low in other Ph. a. desmarestii populations studied. The second most frequent prey was sand smelt Atherina (15%), but its contribution to biomass was low (1.4% of estimated biomass) because of its small ...
The Holocene, 2014
Stomatal density of plants may vary depending on environmental factors, such as CO2 concentration... more Stomatal density of plants may vary depending on environmental factors, such as CO2 concentration. Under the current atmospheric conditions, it is expected that leaves have different stomatal density than they had hundreds or thousands of years ago, due to the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere. Coprolites of the extinct Myotragus balearicus from Cova Estreta (Pollença, Mallorca), with a radiocarbon age of 3775–3640 cal. bc, have been used to study the diet of this bovid. A significant amount of epidermal fragments of Buxus was found in the faecal material. Three coprolites were used to estimate the stomatal density and stomatal index of Buxus epidermal fragments from this period. Samples of the endangered Buxus balearica, the sole species of Buxus currently present on Mallorca, and samples of the Buxus sempervirens, present in the nearest mainland, were also collected in different locations. Leaves were examined using microscopy to determine and compare the stomatal density and stomatal...
Quaternary International, 2008
The Balearic Islands are an archipelago located in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Their isolation... more The Balearic Islands are an archipelago located in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Their isolation from the mainland allowed the establishment of different faunas on each of them. While in Mallorca the Pliocene fauna was composed of the so called Myotragus-fauna (mainly consisting of a bovid, a glirid and a soricid), in Menorca it was constituted by the giant rabbit-fauna (mainly consisting of a giant rabbit and a tortoise), and in the Pityusics by a tortoise, a lizard and two rodents. A main faunal turnover took place during the Late Pliocene or Early Pleistocene: the Myotragus-fauna reached Menorca and substituted the giant rabbit fauna. In the Pityusics, all mammals and the tortoise became extinct before the Late Pleistocene for unknown reasons, leaving birds and the lizard as the only vertebrates of these islands. Almost all the endemic vertebrates of the Balearics became extinct probably due to the first human arrival to the islands.
Journal of Quaternary Science, 2014
ABSTRACT Heinrich Event 3 (H3) is well documented in the North Atlantic Ocean as a cooling event ... more ABSTRACT Heinrich Event 3 (H3) is well documented in the North Atlantic Ocean as a cooling event that occurred ca. 31 000 years ago. Deep-sea cores around the Iberian Peninsula coastline have been analysed to characterize the H3 event, but there are no data on the terrestrial response to this event. Here we present for the first time an analysis of terrestrial proxies for characterizing the H3 event, using the small-vertebrate assemblage (comprising small mammals, squamates and amphibians) from the Galls Carboners cave, an archaeo-palaeontological deposit located in the Prades mountain range in the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula. This assemblage shows the H3 event to be characterized in north-eastern Iberia by harsher and drier terrestrial conditions than today. Our results were compared with the small-vertebrate assemblage data recovered from present-day Strix aluco pellets available from this site, as well as with the general H3 event fluctuations and with other sites where the previous Heinrich events (H5 and H4) and subsequent Late Glacial Maximum have been detected in the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions of the Iberian Peninsula. Terrestrial proxies seem to follow the same climatic pattern as detected in the deep-sea cores at NorthGRIP and the Iberian margins.
Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 2002
The goal of this paper is to establish a solid chronology which spans the earliest human presence... more The goal of this paper is to establish a solid chronology which spans the earliest human presence in each of the three larger Balearic Islands. For this purpose, a review is undertaken of archaeological evidence and associated absolute dating related to the period before the 2nd millennium ...
Endins: publicació d'espeleologia, 2011
En aquest treball descrivim una sèrie de cavitats de la Macaronèsia. Foren topografiades en el cu... more En aquest treball descrivim una sèrie de cavitats de la Macaronèsia. Foren topografiades en el curs de les visites emmarcades a un Projecte de Recerca dirigit a determinar cronologies d'extincions d'espècies autòctones de vertebrats i d'introduccions d'espècies al•lòctones a illes macaronèsiques i a les Balears. Hi descrivim 15 cavitats, majorment de l'illa de Fuerteventura i d'altres de Lanzarote i Madeira.
Zona arqueológica, 2004
Información del artículo Irrupción humana y extinción faunística en las grandes islas del Mediter... more Información del artículo Irrupción humana y extinción faunística en las grandes islas del Mediterráneo durante el Holoceno.
El conocimiento sobre las tortugas gigantes fósiles de Europa se ha incrementado considerablement... more El conocimiento sobre las tortugas gigantes fósiles de Europa se ha incrementado considerablemente en los últimos años y ha comportado la descripción del género Titanochelon para incluir a las especies del Neógeno europeo. Sin embargo, la inclusión de la tortuga gigante de las Islas Baleares, “Testudo” gymnesica, en este género se ha llevado a cabo solo de forma tentativa. Con el objetivo de aclarar el estatus taxonómico y la posición filogenética de esta especie, en este artículo describimos y figuramos en detalle su material tipo (lectotipo y paralectotipos), procedente de Menorca, junto con algunos restos inéditos no incluidos en la descripción original. Las notables diferencias postcraneales que presenta esta especie con respecto a Titanochelon spp. arrojan aún mayores dudas sobre su inclusión en este género. Un análisis cladístico no resuelve sus relaciones filogenéticas. Algunos de los rasgos particulares observados en el espaldar y en los huesos del esqueleto postcraneal de l...
Five new species of recently extinct rails from two Macaronesian archipelagoes (Madeira and Azore... more Five new species of recently extinct rails from two Macaronesian archipelagoes (Madeira and Azores) are described. All the species are smaller in size than their presumed ancestor, the European rail Rallus aquaticus. Two species inhabited the Madeira archipelago: (1) Rallus lowei n. sp., the stouter of the species described herein, was a flightless rail with a robust tarsometatarsus and reduced wings that lived on Madeira Island; (2) Rallus adolfocaesaris n. sp., a flightless and more gracile species than its Madeiran counterpart, inhabited Porto Santo. So far, six Azorean islands have been paleontologically explored, and the remains of fossil rails have been found on all of them. Here we formally describe the best-preserved remains from three islands (Pico, São Miguel and São Jorge): (1) Rallus montivagorum n. sp., a rail smaller than R. aquaticus with a somewhat reduced flying capability, inhabited Pico; (2) Rallus carvaoensis n. sp., a small flightless rail with short and stout l...
Analysis of pellets of European Shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii collected at a non-br... more Analysis of pellets of European Shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii collected at a non-breeding roost site in southern Mallorca identified 36 species of fish prey, belonging to 27 genera and to 16 families. This diversity is higher than in the diet of P. a. aristotelis in the Atlantic, and higher than in the previous literature for P. a. desmarestii in the Mediterranean. European Shags in southern Mallorca foraged mainly on fishes with a mean estimated length of 11.6 cm (84.1% ranging from 6.1–15.0 cm in estimated length), most being pelagic species (59.6 %). The most Figure 5. Post-breeding, roosting Mediterranean Shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii, March 2006, Cabrera National Park. The breeding season in the Balearic Islands starts in November and the first fledged birds can be seen in January–February. P. a. desmarestii has feet with yellow webs, and a longer and more slender bill than P. a. aristotelis. In the photo are two adults, four fledged juveniles and th...
Owing to the catastrophic extinction events that occurred following the Holocene arrival of alien... more Owing to the catastrophic extinction events that occurred following the Holocene arrival of alien species, extant oceanic island biotas are a mixture of recently incorporated alien fauna and remnants of the original fauna. Knowledge of the Late Quaternary pristine island faunas and a reliable chronology of the earliest presence of alien species on each archipelago are critical in understanding the magnitude and tempo of Quaternary island extinctions. Until now, two successive waves of human arrivals have been identified in the North Atlantic Macaronesian archipelagos (Azores, Madeira, Selvagens, Canary and Cape Verde Islands): ‘aboriginal’, which is limited to the Canary Islands around two millennia ago, and ‘colonial’, from the fourteenth century onwards. New surveys in Ponta de São Lourenço (Madeira Island) have allowed us to obtain and date ancient bones of mice. The date obtained (1033 ± 28 BP) documents the earliest evidence for the presence of mice on the island. This date ext...
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society
Viperinae is a subfamily of viperid snakes whose fossil record in the Mediterranean islands is, u... more Viperinae is a subfamily of viperid snakes whose fossil record in the Mediterranean islands is, until now, restricted to 12 palaeontological deposits on seven islands. Revision of the material excavated 30 years ago from the Middle/Late Pleistocene–Holocene deposit of Es Pouàs [Eivissa (= Ibiza), Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean] revealed about 6000 bones of a small-sized viper across different stratigraphic levels. Its morphological characteristics are different enough to known species of Vipera to warrant the description of a new species, but the nearly complete mitochondrial genome obtained from this snake based on a sample dated to 16 130 ± 45 bp, suggested it belonged to a new insular population of Lataste’s viper (Vipera latastei), Vipera latastei ebusitana subsp. nov. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that the dispersal of the ancestors of V. l. ebusitana to Eivissa, most probably from a north-east Iberian population, occurred via overwater colonization < 1.5 Mya, wel...
Spanish Journal of Palaeontology
El conocimiento sobre las tortugas gigantes fósiles de Europa se ha incrementado considerablement... more El conocimiento sobre las tortugas gigantes fósiles de Europa se ha incrementado considerablemente en los últimos años y ha comportado la descripción del género Titanochelon para incluir a las especies del Neógeno europeo. Sin embargo, la inclusión de la tortuga gigante de las Islas Baleares, “Testudo” gymnesica, en este género se ha llevado a cabo solo de forma tentativa. Con el objetivo de aclarar el estatus taxonómico y la posición filogenética de esta especie, en este artículo describimos y figuramos en detalle su material tipo (lectotipo y paralectotipos), procedente de Menorca, junto con algunos restos inéditos no incluidos en la descripción original. Las notables diferencias postcraneales que presenta esta especie con respecto a Titanochelon spp. arrojan aún mayores dudas sobre su inclusión en este género. Un análisis cladístico no resuelve sus relaciones filogenéticas. Algunos de los rasgos particulares observados en el espaldar y en los huesos del esqueleto postcraneal de l...
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Papers by Josep Antoni Alcover