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Description
Remember these guys from my Mediterranean islands size charts? They are back! Nitier and cleaner than ever!

The Mediterranean islands in the Pleistocene had quite an interesting arrange of animals, including an absurd number of otter species (and other mustelids). Their taxonomy is rather troubled due to the lack of material, and thus some aspects of the current taxonomy don't bode.

Otters, unlike most insular animals, undergo rather few changes because coasts and rivers require the same adaptations wether if they are on islands or the mainland. However, some lutrines, such as Lutrogale cretensis from Crete (duh) became more adapted to terrestrial movement, as they could venture to land more often due to lack of predators and presence small vertebrates to feed upon. Most species remain quite similar to modern otters, although there were more sea-dwelling otters than river-dwelling ones, as rivers are usually seasonal or rather scarce on these islands (at least nowadays, probably there were more in the past). Only Lutra castiglionis is theorised to have lived in freshwater, as it was the earliest species of which the rest of Corsica-Sardinia otters supposedly evolved from, and other species feature adaptions to life in the sea, such as Sardolutra ichnusae, which had a large baculum (penis bone) to mate out in the sea. Of these species, the most remarkable one is undoubtly Megalenhydris barbaricina, the largest otter known to exist in Europe, it is estimated to reach lengths of 2 meters and also featured a very flattened tail. Its dentition was adapted to eating shellfish, crustaceans and bottom-dwelling fish, while the other smaller otters it lived with, Algarolutra majori and Sardolutra ichnusae, fed on fast swimming fish, their different diets avoided competition between species. Lastly we have Lutra euxena from Malta, which lacks any proper description of the materials probably to their scarcity, and Lutraeximia trinacriae from Sicily, related to Lutraeximia umbra from mainland Italy, these three are problably closely related to eachother, but as there is no further study of them it remains as a hypothesis.

Damn, I wrote all that, I need to stop being so obsessed with some sosig bones jesus.

Enjoy!

Description
Remember these guys from my Mediterranean islands size charts? They are back! Nitier and cleaner than ever!

The Mediterranean islands in the Pleistocene had quite an interesting arrange of animals, including an absurd number of otter species (and other mustelids). Their taxonomy is rather troubled due to the lack of material, and thus some aspects of the current taxonomy don't bode.

Otters, unlike most insular animals, undergo rather few changes because coasts and rivers require the same adaptations wether if they are on islands or the mainland. However, some lutrines, such as Lutrogale cretensis from Crete (duh) became more adapted to terrestrial movement, as they could venture to land more often due to lack of predators and presence small vertebrates to feed upon. Most species remain quite similar to modern otters, although there were more sea-dwelling otters than river-dwelling ones, as rivers are usually seasonal or rather scarce on these islands (at least nowadays, probably there were more in the past). Only Lutra castiglionis is theorised to have lived in freshwater, as it was the earliest species of which the rest of Corsica-Sardinia otters supposedly evolved from, and other species feature adaptions to life in the sea, such as Sardolutra ichnusae, which had a large baculum (penis bone) to mate out in the sea. Of these species, the most remarkable one is undoubtly Megalenhydris barbaricina, the largest otter known to exist in Europe, it is estimated to reach lengths of 2 meters and also featured a very flattened tail. Its dentition was adapted to eating shellfish, crustaceans and bottom-dwelling fish, while the other smaller otters it lived with, Algarolutra majori and Sardolutra ichnusae, fed on fast swimming fish, their different diets avoided competition between species. Lastly we have Lutra euxena from Malta, which lacks any proper description of the materials probably to their scarcity, and Lutraeximia trinacriae from Sicily, related to Lutraeximia umbra from mainland Italy, these three are problably closely related to eachother, but as there is no further study of them it remains as a hypothesis.

Damn, I wrote all that, I need to stop being so obsessed with some sosig bones jesus.

Enjoy!