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3 unusual facts about Lusitanian


Disjunct distribution

This kind of disjunct distribution of a species, such that it occurs in Iberia and in Ireland, without any intermediate localities, is usually called "Lusitanian" (named after the Roman Province Lusitania, corresponding to modern day Portugal).

Eemian

Many species from the Eemian layers nowadays show a much more southern distribution, ranging from South of the Strait of Dover to Portugal (Lusitanian faunal province) and even into the Mediterranean (Mediterranean faunal province).

Hieracon

Here, in Roman times, was quartered the cohors prima of the Lusitanian auxiliaries.


Disjunct distribution

Examples of animal species with a Lusitanian distribution are: the Kerry slug Geomalacus maculosus and the Pyrenean glass snail Semilimax pyrenaicus.

Gallaecian language

The classical authors Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder wrote about the Celtic and non-Celtic populations of Gallaecia and Lusitania but several modern scholars have postulated Lusitanian and Gallaecian as a single archaic Celtic language.

Halobatrachus didactylus

Halobatrachus didactylus, the Lusitanian toadfish (Gripau (Catalan, Charroco, Encharroco, Xarroco (Portuguese), Pez sapo (Spanish)), is a species of toadfish found along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of western Europe and western Africa.

Nassarius denticulatus

This species occurs in the Eastern Atlantic, from southern Portugal to Angola, also off the Cape Verde islands, Canary Islands, Madeira and Lusitanian seamounts.

Robert Thomas Wilson

He installed half of his 1,200 Lusitanian Legion in the fortress of Almeida and arranged the rest in a thin screen.


see also