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248 R. Hutterer
A possibly related species from the Pleistocene of North Africa

lt is now clear that the Pleistocene shrew of the Sicilian-Maltese archipelago evolved
to the present-day forms. However, the origin of the Pleistocene shrew itself is not
known. Vogel (1988) proposed a relationship between C. sicula and the Canarian
endemie C. canariensis (Hutterer et al. 1987), an assumption which was supported
by Maddalena (1990), and Maddalena & Vogel (1990). However, Michaux et al. (1991)
recently found fossils of C. canariensis in an Upper Pleistocene deposit of Fuerteven-
tura, showing that the Canary shrew formed a separate lineage since at least 30.000
years. Hutterer (1987) and Molina & Hutterer (1989) found morphological similari-
ties between C. canariensis and the North African C. whitakeri and C. tarfayaensis.
lt is likely that ali four species form one clade.

An extinct, yet undescribed species may be added to this tentative clade. lt is
characterized by an extremely enlarged parastyle at P4, which one may interpret as
the exaggerated condition of the brick-like parastyle found in C. sicula. I therefore
hypothesize that the new fossil may represent an ancestor of some of the species of
the C. sicula group. A brief diagnosis of the new taxon is given below to announce
its former existence, however, a more comprehensive description will be given later
in a paper on fossil shrews of Marocco.

Fig. 5: Crocidura maghrebiana n. sp., holotype SMF 86/ 156, frontal part of skull and left and
right P 4 in labial view. Scales represent l mm; hatched areas indicate missing parts (left P4)
or parts covered by sediment.