A seventeenth-century warthog skull in Oxford, England

There are two widely recognized species of warthog: the Cape warthog, Phacochoerus aethiopicus (Pallas, 1766), and the common warthog, P. africanus (Gmelin, 1788). On this basis, it has been assumed that the first warthog specimen arrived in Europe in about 1766. This paper documents the discovery of a common warthog skull in the Tradescant Collection at Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) that probably reached Europe sometime between 1656 and 1678, and that was listed in the Ashmolean Museum 1685 catalogue. This specimen represents the oldest evidence for a warthog in Europe. The skull pre-dates the 1766 naming of the Cape warthog by more than 80 years, and the 1788 naming of the common warthog by at least 100 years. It is surprising that this skull was never the subject of scientific investigations. This is particularly astonishing as, prior to being transferred to the OUMNH in the 1860s, it was in the Ashmolean Museum from at least 1685.