Staurodon cianfanellianus n. sp. (Gastropoda Pulmonata Vertiginidae), a new nesopupine vertiginid snail from the Middle-Late Pliocene Fossil Forest of Dunarobba (central Italy)

Many shells of an enigmatic vertiginid snail were collected from the Middle-Late Pliocene Fossil Forest of Dunarobba (central Italy). The structure of their apertural barrier (an angular lamella joined to the upper vertex of the peristome) matches that of species traditionally assigned to the nesopupines and among them recalls the monospecific Madeiran genus Staurodon. They are therefore assigned to a new species of this genus, S. cianfanellianus, although there is awareness that its classification is somewhat tentative due to taxonomic and systematic uncertainty and frequent character homoplasy in this group of land snails. If correct, this is the first finding of a nesopupine vertiginid in the European Pliocene, since members of this subfamily, currently distributed in tropical regions, are only known in the western Palaearctic from the Late Oligocene to the early Late Miocene