SIRENIUM FOSSIL
Metaxytherium subappenninium
Among the fossils exposed in the Local Paleontological Room particularly noteworthy is the so called Bra Sirenium. This fossil consists of a skull with no jawbone and a rib and that is what remains of the specimen of an extinct species which belongs to the order of Sirenia and is related to the current Dugonghi.species. It was found in a vineyard near Bra in December 1976 by Federico Craveri and prepared by his friend and famous Piedmont’s geologist Bartolomeo Gastaldi. The place where the fossil was found consisted of sandy sediments deposited on a low seafloor about 3 million years ago (Piacenziano, the last period of Pliocene) when the Po Valley was a large gulf with a subtropical climate. The fossil finds of this sirenium , who lived between 3.19 and 2.59 million years ago, belonged to a remarkably big specimen, probably an old man about 3 metres long. The skull shows very developed incisor teeth which supposedly enabled him to eat big rhizomes of the Oceanic Poseidonia, marine plant of the Mediterranean sea. The Sireniums are the only herbivores among marine mammals which live permanently in the water and they have a common ancestor in the elephant. The Metaxytherium subappenninium was the last sirenium who lived in the Mediteranean sea, he died out at the beginning of the Pleistocene era.
