  The SU(3) symmetry realized by J. P. Elliott in the sd nuclear shell is
destroyed in heavier shells by the strong spin-orbit interaction. However, the
SU(3) symmetry has been used for the description of heavy nuclei in terms of
bosons in the framework of the Interacting Boson Approximation, as well as in
terms of fermions using the pseudo-SU(3) approximation. We introduce a new
fermionic approximation, called the proxy-SU(3), and we discuss how some of its
novel predictions come out as a consequence of the short range of the
nucleon-nucleon interaction and the Pauli principle.
