The Holocene Mauritian tortoises, Cylindraspis, from the Paul Carié Collection

For many years, the French naturalist Paul Carié (1876–1930) excavated the Mauritian site of Mare aux Songes, whose sediments contain the bones of almost all the vertebrates that inhabited the island 4,200 years ago. His impressive collection of subfossils is now preserved in several European museums, including the Elbeuf Museum in France. This study focuses on a part of the collection that had not yet been analysed, the tortoise bones of the genus Cylindraspis. Here we present the results of the identifications that have been made on some of the 216 Cylindraspis subfossils from the Elbeuf Museum collection. Based on certain observations made on the skulls, we also discuss the existence of a potential new diagnostic criterion for identifying the different Cylindraspis species: the baso-caudal face of the supraoccipital crest.