The City Council of Estepona has increased the funds of the Municipal Paleontological Museum with a new collection of fossils from the Pliocene period that have been discovered in the city, as reported on Tuesday by the councilor assigned to the Historical Heritage area, Daniel García.
The municipal official explained that the pieces, which stand out for their good state of conservation, correspond to gastropod molluscs and vertebrate animals that already inhabited the earth more than 1.8 million years ago, such as whales, different species of sharks or gilthead bream.
García has assessed that, from now on, citizens who visit the Paleontological Museum will be able to observe these pieces that have been appearing in different deposits of the Pliocene, both in the urban area and in more remote areas, while underlining that this period in Estepona is well known at a paleontological level, for which the museum’s collections now acquire greater relevance.
The mayor responsible for Historical Heritage has pointed out that this collection of fossils has been ceded free of charge to the Consistory by Sofía Mateos. The donor has had the collaboration of the researcher Mauro Brunetti for the correct scientific classification of each of the specimens in this collection.
Likewise, Brunetti, an independent researcher who has carried out work in several Italian universities (Bari, Bologna and Florence) and in different Italian and Spanish museums, has also deposited in the Paleontological Museum of Estepona samples of other species with the intention that visitors can have access to a greater representation of the Pliocene deposits of the municipality.
The researcher has also deposited in the collection several paratypes of species recently discovered by him together with another researcher. The fossils in the collection, which include vvertebrae, teeth and bone fragments, among other remains, They stand out for their good conservation, since most of the pieces are complete and some even retain their original color despite the fact that they may be 5.3 million years old.
In this regard, it should be remembered that the Pliocene is the period of the Cenozoic era spanning from the Miocene (over 5.3 million years ago) to the early Pleistocene (approximately 1.8 million years ago).