SUPERDENSE MASSIVE GALAXIES IN WINGS LOCAL CLUSTERS

Massive quiescent galaxies at z > 1 have been found to have small physical sizes, and hence to be superdense. Several mechanisms, including minor mergers, have been proposed for increasing galaxy sizes from high-to low-z. We search for superdense massive galaxies in the WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS) of X-ray selected galaxy clusters at 0.04 < z < 0.07. We discover a significant population of superdense massive galaxies with masses and sizes comparable to those observed at high redshift. They approximately represent 22% of all cluster galaxies more massive than 3 x 10(10) M(circle dot), are mostly S0 galaxies, have a median effective radius < Re > = 1.61 +/- 0.29 kpc, a median Sersic index < n > = 3.0 +/- 0.6, and very old stellar populations with a median mass-weighted age of 12.1 +/- 1.3 Gyr. We calculate a number density of 2.9 x 10(-2) Mpc(-3) for superdense galaxies in local clusters, and a hard lower limit of 1.3 x 10(-5) Mpc(-3) in the whole comoving volume between z = 0.04 and z = 0.07. We find a relation between mass, effective radius, and luminosity-weighted age in our cluster galaxies, which can mimic the claimed evolution of the radius with redshift, if not properly taken into account. We compare our data with spectroscopic high-z surveys and find that-when stellar masses are considered-there is consistency with the local WINGS galaxy sizes out to z similar to 2, while a discrepancy of a factor of 3 exists with the only spectroscopic z > 2 study. In contrast, there is strong evidence for a large evolution in radius for the most massive galaxies with M(*) > 4 x 10(11) M(circle dot) compared to similarly massive galaxies in WINGS, i.e., the brightest cluster galaxies.