New species of mammal found 'lived in Madrid nine million years ago'

The Circamustela Peignei is described as a small meat-eating animal which was native to the central part of mainland Spain, or what is now Madrid, and was found in the region's Batallones archaeological dig on the hill of the same name in Torrejón de Velasco.

According to Spain's National Museum of Natural Sciences, fossilised teeth, jaw bones and skull parts enabled the team to identify the creature properly – until now, they had thought it was the remains of an animal described back in 1967 after fossils were found in Can Llobateres, in the Valle del Penedès area of Barcelona province.

But the 'new' carnivore found is said to be 'much more primitive'.

Detailed micro CT scans allowed the team to view the inside of its bones and other parts which were not immediately on view and could not otherwise have been examined without damaging the fossil.

“It's an as-yet unknown species of mustelid,” says Natural Sciences Museum researcher Jorge Morales.

The mustelidae family covers about 55 species of ferrets, otters, badgers, polecats, weasels, martens and the wolverine.

“This one is of a similar size to the beech marten or pine marten, but with slimmer and sharper teeth, their having adapted to a greater consumption of meat than other, similar mustelids that would have lived with it around nine million years ago,” Morales explains.

“These features have allowed us to infer that it was a carnivore with a more 'specialised' diet than modern-day martens, which have a more eclectic, varied diet,” said Alberto Valenciano, who is Spanish but works as a researcher at the Iziko Museum in Cape Town, South Africa.

“Our investigation is very significant, because it completes, and enhances, the knowledge we hitherto had about the diversity of carnivores living in the Batallones area.

“Along with the ones we already knew about – large carnivores like the sabre-toothed tiger, bears, and amphicyonidae [an extinct species halfway between a dog and a bear] – which lived in the Madrid area nine million years ago, we now know that there was a range of small and medium-sized ones of great interest; skunks, martens, badgers and other mustelids which, undoubtedly, will throw up some surprises for us again in the future.”

The dig on the Cerro de Batallones – literally, 'Battalion Hill' – in the Torrejón de Velasco area of the Greater Madrid region is one of the key Miocene settlements in what used to be Eurasia, and modern-day Africa, and has been found to be home to a huge variety of terrestrial vertebrates.

Its significance lies not only in the number of fossils found there – experts have been studying remains discovered in the dig almost non-stop for nearly 30 years – but the excellent quality and condition of those found in the area.

Spain's science ministry, led by former astronaut Pedro Duque, calls the Batallones site 'an exceptional window onto fauna that populated the Iberian peninsula nine million years ago'.

Excavations take place at least annually with the support of the Madrid regional government and the National Research Council (CSIC), and ongoing findings have helped uncover clues as to how life on Earth has been evolving for millions of years up to the present.

Investigators behind the discovery and documenting of the 'new' creature include the CSIC, the Natural Sciences Museum, the Miquel Crusafont-Catalunya Palaeontology Institute, and Cape Town's Iziko Museum.

The photograph, above, of the fossilised remains found in the Batallones dig was taken by the CSIC.