Restringido

Fossil specimens of the Barbary macaque, Macaca sylvanus Linnaeus,1758, first appeared in Europe in the Pliocene and disappeared in the Late Pleistocene (Szalay and Delson, 1979; the Late Miocene specimens from Almenara, Spain, are fragmentary and not readily identified to the species level: see Köhler et al., 2000). To date, no conclusive morphometric or morphological criteria exist to make a clear distinction between the PlioePleistocene1 fossil remains and modern macaque populations. It has, however, been proposed that they can be grouped into three subspecies: Macaca sylvanus prisca
Gervais, 1859 for the Pliocene forms, Macaca sylvanus florentina Cocchi,1872 for the specimens from the Early Pleistocene, and Macaca sylvanus pliocena Owen, 1846 for those from the Middle and Late Pleistocene (Delson, 1980). This classification has been accepted and used by several authors (Rook, 1997; Montoya et al., 1999; Zapfe, 2001; Alba et al., 2008). In this context, any fossil that provides new morphometric data is a significant contribution towards establishing the evolutionary history of this species during the Pleistocene.
Although fossils of M. sylvanus are rare in Europe, they have
increased in recent years. A recent review (Fooden, 2007) cites 59 localities, unequally distributed among fifteen countries: Italy (18), France (9), Germany (7), Spain (6), United Kingdom (4), and other countries with fewer than four occurrences. The number of macaque occurrences in the Iberian Peninsula has doubled since then, as new sites with macaque fossils have been published. Four of them are located in the Mediterranean area, and of these, three are dated to the Early Pleistocene: Sierra de Quibas (Montoya et al., 1999), Cal Guardiola and Vallparadís (Alba et al., 2008). The fourth, Cueva de Bolomor,
is attributed to the Middle Pleistocene (Blasco et al., 2008). To these we can add the Portuguese site of Galeria Pesada (Brugal, 2004), which represents the first occurrence of this species on the Atlantic coast of Iberia in the Middle Pleistocene. This paper reports the sixth new specimen, a M. sylvanus mandible found in the Cave of Lezetxiki II. It is the first record of this species in the Cantabrian Region (northern Iberian Peninsula) and one of the youngest macaque specimens in all of Europe.

Castaños, P., Murelaga, X., Arrizabalaga, A., Iriarte, M.J., 2011. First evidence of Macaca sylvanus (Primates, Cercopithecidae) from the Late Pleistocene of Lezetxiki II cave (Basque Country, Spain). Journal of Human Evolution 60 (2011), 816-820