Palaeontological site Fonelas P-1

The palaeontological site of Fonelas P-1, 2 million years old (magnetostratigraphy and biostratigraphy), is suitable for the sedimentation in a flood plain of an abandoned meander, within a river system, and the state of conservation of the palaeontological remains it contains is excellent, since the lithology in which they are found is of a silty nature with the presence of clay intraclasts.

It is a bioturbed facies by mammals footsteps on the sediments of the abandoned meander, where the accumulating agents have been carnivorous scavengers whose activity also produces organogenic sediments; after the activity of the hyenas (scavengers of the species Pachycrocuta brevirostris) there is a burial of the fossiliferous unit by the sediments of the floodplain resulting from the overflow of a main channel.

The association of Fonelas P-1 is configured by the following species: Colubridae gen. indet., Testudo sp., Birds gen. indet., Mimomys sp., Castillomys sp. cf. C. rivas, Apodemus sp., Stephanomys sp., Eliomys sp., Prolagus sp. cf. P. calpensis, Oryctolagus sp., Erinaceus sp. cf. Erinaceus europaeus, Meles iberica, Vulpes alopecoides, Canis accitanus, Canis etruscus, Canis sp. cf. C. falconeri, Lynx issiodorensis valdarnensis, Acinonyx pardinensis, Megantereon cultridens roderici, Homotherium latidens, Hyaena brunnea, Pachycrocuta brevirostris, Croizetoceros ramosus fonelensis, Metacervoceros rhenanus philisi, Eucladoceros sp., Gazella nov. sp. aff. G. borbonica, Gazellospira torticornis hispanica, Leptobos etruscus, Praeovibos nov. sp. aff. P. priscus, Paleotragus (Mitilanotherium) nov. sp., Potamochoerus magnus, Capra baetica, Equus major, Stephanorhinus etruscus and Mammuthus meridionalis.

This site has the record of a mixture of native European fauna together with African and Asian immigrants. Likewise, it presents the following singularities: different species and subspecies of large mammals new to science, the first European population of wolves, the first Iberian lynx population, the first world population of ibex, the only populations outside Africa of brown hyena and river boar, the most modern Spanish population of paleotraguine giraffes and the last known European population of giant land turtles of the Titanochelon genus.