Fossil Tales Across Time and Space: Mythogenesis and Taphonomic Contexts from Greece to Magna Graecia

The role of vertebrate fossils in the origin of ancient Greek myths remains an intriguing and open question. A comparative paleontological and historical assessment between Aegean Greece and Magna Graecia (Southern Italy) is presented, focusing on the Late Miocene giraffid Samotherium. The Genus is characteristic of the Greco-Iranian biogeographic province, also recorded outside its primary range in Calabria. This region was part of Magna Graecia, the extensive Southern Italian territory settled by Greek colonists who established flourishing cities from the 8th century BC onward. Whereas specific Late Miocene fossil sites in Greece are linked to geomyths, such as the bone-rich red beds of Samos associated with the monstruous Neades, no such attributions are recorded in Calabria. Although the coastline near the Greek colony of Hipponion, the modern city of Vibo Valentia, is known as the “Costa degli Dei” (Coast of the Gods), vertebrate fossils are not associated with ancient myth, whereas invertebrate fossils supported local folk traditions. These discrepancies between Greece and Calabria are likely driven by contrasting taphonomic contexts and differences in fossil exposure, discoverability, and skeletal element representation.