First occurrence of Cardilia michelottii Deshayes, 1844 (Bivalvia, Cardiliidae) in the Iberian Pliocene

The family Cardilidae groups a small number of bivalve species from the superfamily Mactroidea, which have been scarcely found and have a known stratigraphic range from the middle Eocene to the present day. From these stand out Cardilia michelottii Deshayes, 1844, as an extinct valid species only previously knew from the Italian Peninsula, where it has been recorded from the Miocene of Emilia-Romagna, the Pliocene of Tuscany and Piedmont, and the Pleistocene of Lazio. The first finding of this species outside the Italian ranges is here reported from a single, but well-preserved left valve collected from the lower Piacenzian molluscan assemblage of Vale
de Freixo fossil site (Pombal, West Portugal), in the Pliocene Mondego Basin. This allows to extend the known biogeographic range of this thermophilic species to the Iberian Peninsula, and also to reduce the geographical gap between the Neogene to present-day West African and Mediterranean occurrences of this morphologically very distinctive genus of warm shallow-water bivalve assemblages.