First record of the brachiopod Lingula? From the Pliocene of Tuscany (Italy): The youngest occurrence of lingulides in the Mediterranean Basin

We report on new fossils of chitinophosphatic brachiopods from Upper Pliocene (Piacenzian) marginal-marine clayey sands cropping out at La Serra (Tuscany, central Italy). Based on their morphological characters, these specimens are here assigned to the linguliform family Lingulidae and tentatively recognised as belonging to the extant genus Lingula. This is the first record of lingulides from the Mediterranean Pliocene, as well as the geologically youngest one from the Mediterranean Basin. Since the family Lingulidae has previously been reported from the upper Miocene of Italy, the occurrence of lingulides in the Pliocene of Tuscany evokes the persistence of lingulide brachiopods within the Mediterranean Sea during the Messinian Salinity Crisis or their recolonization of this basin shortly after the Miocene-to-Pliocene transition. The eventual extirpation of the family Lingulidae from the Mediterranean Sea could have resulted from the progressive cooling of seawater and loss of shallow-water coastal environments that occurred in Pleistocene times.