Osteology, fossil record and palaeodiversity of the European lizards
Andrea Villa
Emanuele Tschopp
Georgios L. Georgalis
Massimo Delfino
10.6084/m9.figshare.4668718.v1
https://brill.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Osteology_fossil_record_and_palaeodiversity_of_the_European_lizards/4668718
<p>The capability of palaeontologists to identify fossil remains of a
particular group of vertebrates strongly depends on the knowledge they have of
its comparative osteology and on the actual presence of diagnostic differences
among the considered taxa. This could have a relevant influence on the study of
palaeodiversity, since a low recognisability causes a loss of data when trying
to reconstruct the history of taxa that lived on Earth in the past. Currently,
more than 6000 extant species of lizards and worm lizards are known, and new
ones continue to be discovered, mainly based on molecular data. But are we able
to recognise this high diversity using osteology? As far as European taxa are
concerned, the osteological recognisability of non-snake squamates is very low:
only 31% of the extant European taxa can be identified based on their skeletal
morphology. This is balanced partially by the fact that most recognisable taxa
have been actually recognised in the fossil record, suggesting that the lost
data are mainly due to the scarce knowledge of the comparative osteology of
these reptiles and less influenced by other biases, such as taphonomic or
collection biases. In this context, specimen-level phylogenetic analysis has
proved to be a useful tool to identify diagnostic combinations of osteological
features, at least for lacertid species, as evidenced by a case study focused
on the genus <i>Lacerta</i>. </p>
2017-02-21 14:17:28
biodiversity
identification
palaeontology
reptiles
squamates
Zoology
Paleontology
Vertebrate Biology