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Antunes MT, Pérez-García A. A bothremydid turtle (Pleurodira) from the middle Cenomanian of Vale de Figueira (Belas, Portugal). Anat Rec (Hoboken) 2024. [PMID: 38500371 DOI: 10.1002/ar.25429] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/03/2023] [Revised: 02/29/2024] [Accepted: 03/04/2024] [Indexed: 03/20/2024]
Abstract
An unpublished turtle shell from the middle Cenomanian of Vale de Figueira, near Belas (Lisbon District, Portugal), is recognized by us as collected in 1880 under the direction of Carlos Ribeiro. No turtle remains from that region had so far been figured, described or discussed from a systematic point of view. The specimen corresponds to a partial but articulated shell. It is attributed to Pleurodira and, more specifically, to Bothremydidae. Only one pre-Campanian turtle specimen was previously identified at the infrafamilial level in the Cretaceous record of Portugal. It was a partial shell from the middle Cenomanian of Nazaré (Leiria District) attributed to the bothremydid Algorachelus peregrina, a species defined in a Spanish synchronous locality (Algora, in Central Spain). Several anatomical regions in the specimen from Vale de Figueira were not preserved in the partial carapace from Nazaré, and differences in the morphology of some elements are recognized between both shells. However, the individual studied here is also ascribed to Algorachelus peregrina, these differences being justified by intraspecific variability. Therefore, the specimen represents the second evidence on the species in Portugal, being the only one recognized for the Lisbon District.
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Affiliation(s)
- Miguel Telles Antunes
- Museu Maynense, Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, R. da Academia das Ciências, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Adán Pérez-García
- Grupo de Biología Evolutiva, Dpto. de Física Matemática y de Fluidos, Facultad de Ciencias, UNED, Madrid, Spain
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Cabezuelo-Hernández A, Pérez-García A. A New Species of the Pythonomorph Carentonosaurus from the Cenomanian of Algora (Guadalajara, Central Spain). Animals (Basel) 2023; 13:ani13071197. [PMID: 37048453 PMCID: PMC10093179 DOI: 10.3390/ani13071197] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2023] [Revised: 03/24/2023] [Accepted: 03/27/2023] [Indexed: 04/03/2023] Open
Abstract
The Cenomanian (lowermost Upper Cretaceous) faunal assemblages are of high interest in understanding the turnovers that took place between the Early and the Late Cretaceous, resulting in significant differences. In this context, the analysis of the association of reptiles found in the Algora fossil site (Guadalajara Province, Central Spain) is of great interest since it represents the first European Cenomanian site with a high concentration of macrovertebrate remains. A new pythonomorph ‘lizard’ from Algora, Carentonosaurus algorensis sp. nov., is described here. It is the second representative of this European genus. Its microanatomical study reveals that an extreme pachyosteosclerosis affected at least its dorsal vertebrae, suggesting adaptations for slow-swimming habits in shallow-water environments. Consequently, this new taxon is interpreted as a slow swimmer, hovering near the bottom of near-shore marine environments of the Late Cretaceous European Archipelago and, more specifically, along the shores of the larger Iberian Island for that period. This is in concordance with the high diversification of ‘pachyostotic’ pythonomorphs recorded during the Cenomanian, allowing the subsequent adaptation of this lineage to open marine environments.
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Fischer V, Weis R, Thuy B. Refining the marine reptile turnover at the Early-Middle Jurassic transition. PeerJ 2021; 9:e10647. [PMID: 33665003 PMCID: PMC7906043 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.10647] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/01/2020] [Accepted: 12/04/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Even though a handful of long-lived reptilian clades dominated Mesozoic marine ecosystems, several biotic turnovers drastically changed the taxonomic composition of these communities. A seemingly slow paced, within-geological period turnover took place across the Early–Middle Jurassic transition. This turnover saw the demise of early neoichthyosaurians, rhomaleosaurid plesiosaurians and early plesiosauroids in favour of ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurians and cryptoclidid and pliosaurid plesiosaurians, clades that will dominate the Late Jurassic and, for two of them, the entire Early Cretaceous as well. The fossil record of this turnover is however extremely poor and this change of dominance appears to be spread across the entire middle Toarcian–Bathonian interval. We describe a series of ichthyosaurian and plesiosaurian specimens from successive geological formations in Luxembourg and Belgium that detail the evolution of marine reptile assemblages across the Early–Middle Jurassic transition within a single area, the Belgo–Luxembourgian sub-basin. These fossils reveal the continuing dominance of large rhomaleosaurid plesiosaurians, microcleidid plesiosaurians and Temnodontosaurus-like ichthyosaurians up to the latest Toarcian, indicating that the structuration of the upper tier of Western Europe marine ecosystems remained essentially constant up to the very end of the Early Jurassic. These fossils also suddenly record ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurians and cryptoclidid plesiosaurians by the early Bajocian. These results from a geographically-restricted area provide a clearer picture of the shape of the marine reptile turnover occurring at the early–Middle Jurassic transition. This event appears restricted to the sole Aalenian stage, reducing the uncertainty of its duration, at least for ichthyosaurians and plesiosaurians, to 4 instead of 14 million years.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentin Fischer
- Evolution & Diversity Dynamics Lab, UR Geology, Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium
| | - Robert Weis
- Department of palaeontology, Natural History Museum Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg
| | - Ben Thuy
- Department of palaeontology, Natural History Museum Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg
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Fischer V, MacLaren JA, Soul LC, Bennion RF, Druckenmiller PS, Benson RBJ. The macroevolutionary landscape of short-necked plesiosaurians. Sci Rep 2020; 10:16434. [PMID: 33009498 PMCID: PMC7532190 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-73413-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/15/2020] [Accepted: 09/16/2020] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Throughout their evolution, tetrapods have repeatedly colonised a series of ecological niches in marine ecosystems, producing textbook examples of convergent evolution. However, this evolutionary phenomenon has typically been assessed qualitatively and in broad-brush frameworks that imply simplistic macroevolutionary landscapes. We establish a protocol to visualize the density of trait space occupancy and thoroughly test for the existence of macroevolutionary landscapes. We apply this protocol to a new phenotypic dataset describing the morphology of short-necked plesiosaurians, a major component of the Mesozoic marine food webs (ca. 201 to 66 Mya). Plesiosaurians evolved this body plan multiple times during their 135-million-year history, making them an ideal test case for the existence of macroevolutionary landscapes. We find ample evidence for a bimodal craniodental macroevolutionary landscape separating latirostrines from longirostrine taxa, providing the first phylogenetically-explicit quantitative assessment of trophic diversity in extinct marine reptiles. This bimodal pattern was established as early as the Middle Jurassic and was maintained in evolutionary patterns of short-necked plesiosaurians until a Late Cretaceous (Turonian) collapse to a unimodal landscape comprising longirostrine forms with novel morphologies. This study highlights the potential of severe environmental perturbations to profoundly alter the macroevolutionary dynamics of animals occupying the top of food chains.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentin Fischer
- Evolution & Diversity Dynamics Lab, Université de Liège, 14 Allée du 6 Août, 4000, Liège, Belgium.
| | - Jamie A MacLaren
- Evolution & Diversity Dynamics Lab, Université de Liège, 14 Allée du 6 Août, 4000, Liège, Belgium
| | - Laura C Soul
- Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, DC, 20013-7012, USA
| | - Rebecca F Bennion
- Evolution & Diversity Dynamics Lab, Université de Liège, 14 Allée du 6 Août, 4000, Liège, Belgium
- OD Earth and History of Life, Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique, 29 Rue Vautier, 1000, Brussels, Belgium
| | - Patrick S Druckenmiller
- University of Alaska Museum and Department of Geosciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1962 Yukon Drive, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA
| | - Roger B J Benson
- Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks road, Oxford, OX1 3AN, UK
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Paparella I, Palci A, Nicosia U, Caldwell MW. A new fossil marine lizard with soft tissues from the Late Cretaceous of southern Italy. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2018; 5:172411. [PMID: 30110414 PMCID: PMC6030324 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.172411] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/29/2017] [Accepted: 05/21/2018] [Indexed: 06/08/2023]
Abstract
A new marine lizard showing exceptional soft tissue preservation was found in Late Cretaceous deposits of the Apulian Platform (Puglia, Italy). Primitivus manduriensis gen. et sp. nov. is not only the first evidence of the presence of dolichosaurs in a southern Italian Carbonate Platform, filling a palaeogeographic gap in the Mediterranean Tethys, but also extends the range of this group to the upper Campanian-lower Maastrichtian. Our parsimony analysis recovers a monophyletic non-ophidian pythonomorph clade, including Tetrapodophis amplectus at the stem of Mosasauroidea + Dolichosauridae, which together represent the sister group of Ophidia (modern and fossil snakes). Based on Bayesian inference instead, Pythonomorpha is monophyletic, with Ophidia representing the more deeply nested clade, and the new taxon as basal to all other pythonomorphs. Primitivus displays a fairly conservative morphology in terms of both axial elongation of the trunk and limb reduction, and the coexistence of aquatic adaptations with features hinting at the retention of the ability to move on land suggests a semi-aquatic lifestyle. The exceptional preservation of mineralized muscles, portions of the integument, cartilages and gut content provides unique sources of information about this extinct group of lizards. The new specimen may represent local persistence of a relict dolichosaur population until almost the end of the Cretaceous in the Mediterranean Tethys, and demonstrates the incompleteness of our knowledge of dolichosaur temporal and spatial distributions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ilaria Paparella
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9, Canada
- Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Sapienza Università di Roma, 00185 Rome, Italy
| | - Alessandro Palci
- College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia
- South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, Australia
| | - Umberto Nicosia
- Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Sapienza Università di Roma, 00185 Rome, Italy
| | - Michael W. Caldwell
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9, Canada
- Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9, Canada
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Fischer V, Benson RBJ, Druckenmiller PS, Ketchum HF, Bardet N. The evolutionary history of polycotylid plesiosaurians. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2018; 5:172177. [PMID: 29657811 PMCID: PMC5882735 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.172177] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/11/2017] [Accepted: 02/13/2018] [Indexed: 05/31/2023]
Abstract
Polycotylidae is a clade of plesiosaurians that appeared during the Early Cretaceous and became speciose and abundant early in the Late Cretaceous. However, this radiation is poorly understood. Thililua longicollis from the Middle Turonian of Morocco is an enigmatic taxon possessing an atypically long neck and, as originally reported, a series of unusual cranial features that cause unstable phylogenetic relationships for polycotylids. We reinterpret the holotype specimen of Thililua longicollis and clarify its cranial anatomy. Thililua longicollis possesses an extensive, foramina-bearing jugal, a premaxilla-parietal contact and carinated teeth. Phylogenetic analyses of a new cladistic dataset based on first-hand observation of most polycotylids recover Thililua and Mauriciosaurus as successive lineages at the base of the earliest Late Cretaceous polycotyline radiation. A new dataset summarizing the Bauplan of polycotylids reveals that their radiation produced an early burst of disparity during the Cenomanian-Turonian interval, with marked plasticity in relative neck length, but this did not arise as an ecological release following the extinction of ichthyosaurs and pliosaurids. This disparity vanished during and after the Turonian, which is consistent with a model of 'early experimentation/late constraint'. Two polycotylid clades, Occultonectia clade nov. and Polycotylinae, survived up to the Maastrichtian, but with low diversity.
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Affiliation(s)
- V. Fischer
- Department of Geology, Université de Liège, 14 allée du 6 Août, Liège 4000, Belgium
| | - R. B. J. Benson
- Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3AN, UK
| | - P. S. Druckenmiller
- University of Alaska Museum and Department of Geosciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1962 Yukon Drive, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA
| | - H. F. Ketchum
- Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PW, UK
| | - N. Bardet
- CR2P CNRS-MNHN-UPMC Paris 6, Département Origines et Evolution, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CP 38, 57 rue Cuvier, 75005 Paris, France
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Tethyan changes shaped aquatic diversification. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2017; 93:874-896. [DOI: 10.1111/brv.12376] [Citation(s) in RCA: 46] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2016] [Revised: 09/12/2017] [Accepted: 09/13/2017] [Indexed: 01/19/2023]
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Extinction of fish-shaped marine reptiles associated with reduced evolutionary rates and global environmental volatility. Nat Commun 2016; 7:10825. [PMID: 26953824 PMCID: PMC4786747 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10825] [Citation(s) in RCA: 46] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2015] [Accepted: 01/22/2016] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite their profound adaptations to the aquatic realm and their apparent success throughout the Triassic and the Jurassic, ichthyosaurs became extinct roughly 30 million years before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Current hypotheses for this early demise involve relatively minor biotic events, but are at odds with recent understanding of the ichthyosaur fossil record. Here, we show that ichthyosaurs maintained high but diminishing richness and disparity throughout the Early Cretaceous. The last ichthyosaurs are characterized by reduced rates of origination and phenotypic evolution and their elevated extinction rates correlate with increased environmental volatility. In addition, we find that ichthyosaurs suffered from a profound Early Cenomanian extinction that reduced their ecological diversity, likely contributing to their final extinction at the end of the Cenomanian. Our results support a growing body of evidence revealing that global environmental change resulted in a major, temporally staggered turnover event that profoundly reorganized marine ecosystems during the Cenomanian. The extinction of the ichthyosaurs had previously been attributed to increasing competition or to the loss of their main prey. Here, Fischer et al. analyse phylogenetic and ecological patterns of ichthyosaur diversification and extinction, and find that the decline of the group is more likely due to climatic volatility.
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Kelley NP, Pyenson ND. Evolutionary innovation and ecology in marine tetrapods from the Triassic to the Anthropocene. Science 2015; 348:aaa3716. [DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa3716] [Citation(s) in RCA: 97] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/16/2023]
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Paleohistology and lifestyle inferences of a dyrosaurid (Archosauria: Crocodylomorpha) from Paraíba Basin (northeastern Brazil). PLoS One 2014; 9:e102189. [PMID: 25032965 PMCID: PMC4102515 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0102189] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2013] [Accepted: 06/16/2014] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Among the few vertebrates that survived the mass extinction event documented at the Cretaceous-Paleocene boundary are dyrosaurid crocodylomorphs. Surprisingly, there is little information regarding the bone histology of dyrosaurids, despite their relatively common occurrence in the fossil record, and the potential to gain insight about their biology and lifestyle. We provide the first description of the long bone histology of the dyrosaurids. Specimens were collected from the Maria Farinha Formation, in the Paraíba Basin of northeast Brazil. Thin sections of a right femur and left tibia were made. In the left tibia, the cortex consists of lamellar-zonal bone with five lines of arrested growth (LAGs), spaced ∼300 µm apart. The tibia contains a small to medium-sized organized vascular network of both simple vascular canals and primary osteons that decrease in density periostially. The femur exhibits a similar histological pattern overall but has double-LAGs, and an EFS layer (the latter is rare in living crocodylians). Secondary osteons occur in the deep cortex near and inside the spongiosa as a result of remodeling in both bones. This tissue pattern is fairly common among slow-growing animals. These specimens were a sub-adult and a senescent. Patterns in the distribution of bone consistent with osteosclerosis suggest that these animals probably hada fast-swimming ecology. Although these results are consistent with the histology in anatomically convergent taxa, it will be necessary to make additional sections from the mid-diaphysis in order to assign their ecology.
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Houssaye A. Palaeoecological and morphofunctional interpretation of bone mass increase: an example in Late Cretaceous shallow marine squamates. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2012; 88:117-39. [DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-185x.2012.00243.x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
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