Pikermi () is a suburb of

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

and a former

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

East Attica East Attica () is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Attica. The regional unit covers the eastern part of the urban agglomeration of Athens, and also the rural area to its east. Administration The regional unit East ...

regional unit,

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Rafina-Pikermi, of which it is a municipal unit. The municipal unit has an area of 21.522 km².

Geography

Pikermi is situated at the northern edge of the Mesogaia plain, south of the Penteliko Mountain. It is 5 km east of

Pallini Pallini () is a suburban town in Greater Athens Area and a municipality in East Attica, Greece. The seat of the municipality is the town Gerakas. It is the seat of administration of the East Attica regional unit. Geography Pallini is situated ...

, 6 km west of

Rafina Rafina () is a suburban port town located on the eastern coast of Attica in Greece. It has a population of 14,620 inhabitants (2021 census). Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Rafina-Pikermi, of which it is the ...

and 19 km east of

city centre.

Greek National Road 54 Greek National Road 54 (EO54) is a National Road in Greater Athens and Athens metropolitan area in Attica, Greece. Route According to the Government Gazette in 1963, the EO54 runs from central Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capi ...

(Athens - Rafina) passes through Pikermi. The municipal unit Pikermi consists of the settlements Pikermi, Drafi and Dioni.

Paleontology

Pikermi features a paleontological site which has more than forty mammal species from the late

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

(8 million years ago). What is special about Pikermi is that it is one of the first Miocene fossil localities to be discovered. It was discovered in 1839 by Bavarian soldiers of king

Otto Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants '' Audo'', '' Odo'', '' Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded fr ...

. Since it was one of the first localities, many of the

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

named there are

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

. The locality itself is used as the archetypal example of a 'Pikermian' chronofauna that existed from Afghanistan to the Balkans during the

Late Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene epoch (geology), Epoch made up of two faunal stage, stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million ye ...

. Similar

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

are found on

Samos Island Samos (, also ; , ) is a Greece, Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the Mycale Strait. It is also a separate ...

in Greece and

Shanxi Shanxi; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi is a Provinces of China, province in North China. Its capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi a ...

Geography

Paleontology

Historical population

References

External links