The Gemmellaro Collection: first record of an anomuran from the Tithonian of Sicily, Italy

Abstract

A recent field trip to Sicily and an examination of decapod crustacean collections at the Museo Geologico G.G. Gemmellaro in the centre of Palermo, Sicily (Italy), has demonstrated that most of the anomuran and brachyuran material described by Gemmellaro (Gemmellaro GG. 1869. Studi paleontologici sulla fauna del Calcare a Terebratula janitor del nord di Sicilia. Palermo: Lao, vol. 1, pp. 11–18) from the Tithonian of that island is still present. Interestingly, a single specimen in this lot was never mentioned, described or illustrated by that author. The species to which this particular individual is here shown to belong, Gastrosacus tuberosus , was first described and named 26 years later, in 1895, by Remes. The holotype of G. tuberosus (Remes M. 1895. Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Crustaceen der Stramberger Schichten. Bulletin international de l'Academie des Sciences de l'Empereur Francois Joseph I, Classe des Sciences mathematiques et naturelle 2: 200–201) has recently been rediscovered; this shows that both Galathea eminens Blaschke (Blaschke F. 1911. Zur Tithonfauna von Stramberg in Mahren. Annalen des kaiserlich-koniglichen Naturhistorischen Hofmuseums 25: 143–221) and Galatheites tuberosiformus Lőrenthey, in Lőrenthey and Beurlen (Lőrenthey E, Beurlen K. 1929. Die fossilen Dekapoden der Lander der Ungarischen Krone. Geologica Hungarica 3: 1–420) are junior synonyms. The Sicilian record constitutes the southernmost mention of G. tuberosus to date.