A complete hyoid bone of a woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) from the Late Pleistocene at Artazu VIII (Gipuzkoa, northern Iberian Peninsula)

The presence of Coelodonta antiquitatis has been only confirmed at 25 sites in the Iberian Peninsula, and 20 of them are in the Cantabrian region. Among the skeletal remains recovered so far, the hyoid bone of this species has never been described at the Iberian Peninsula, and it is also very scarce in the rest of Europe. Artazu VIII site is presented in this work as the most important location known for this species in the Iberian Peninsula, yielding the first complete hyoid bone attributable to Coelodonta antiquitatis. The morphology and the measurements of the hyoid bone from Artazu VIII is described in detail in this work, and its dimensions are compared with a specimen found at Neumark-Nord site (Germany), whose attribution to the woolly rhinoceros is not certain. Metric differences seem statistically significant, which can be attributed either to sexual dimorphism or taxonomic differences at the specific level.