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. 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. 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.
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