Alca impennis, humerus and ulna

In the phases of the wurm glacial retreat (15-10 thousand years) the Salento was in the midst of freezing cold which had transformed it into a steppe and arid prairie ravaged by winds coming from Siberia and inhabited by cold climate animals including Alca impennis, a boreal penguin about 70 cm tall and unable to fly. The two finds, connected, come from the deposits of brown earth in Grotta Romanelli, investigated between 1914 and 1920 by Gian Alberto Blanc and are amongst the rarest documents which certify the presence of this alcidae in the Mediterranean area. The last sighting of a specimen belonging to this species threatened by extinction from the end of the Palaeolithic period was in the North Sea during the course of the 19^th century.