期刊
ZOOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY
卷 176, 期 4, 页码 861-877出版社
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/zoj.12340
关键词
Canary Islands; Europe; island rule; lacertid phylogeny- Palaeogene; Squamata
类别
资金
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany
- Slovak Academy of Sciences [2/0087/13]
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [Mu 1760/7-1]
- Scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education of Slovak Republic
The endemic Canary Island lizard clade Gallotia, which includes the largest members of Europe's dominant reptile group, Lacertidae, is one of the classic examples of insular gigantism. For the first time we use fossil data to test the evolutionary reasons for the association between gigantism and herbivory. We describe an almost completely preserved skeleton of Janosikia ulmensiscomb.nov. from the early Miocene of Ulm, Germany (MN2a,approximate to 22Mya). We show that this species and Oligocene Pseudeumeces cadurcensis (Filhol, 1877) are in fact crown lacertids, and the first known pre-Quaternary record of the total clade of Gallotia. Pseudeumeces confirms the early origin of crown Lacertidae in the Palaeogene of Europe. More importantly, these fossil taxa show that large body size was already achieved on the European mainland by the early Miocene. Furthermore, Pseudeumeces and Janosikia were faunivorous, thus demonstrating that insularity, not large body size, was crucial to the evolution of herbivory in this lineage. Body size change in Gallotia was more complex than previously thought, encompassing size increase [e.g. in the extinct Gallotia goliath (Mertens, 1942)], but more commonly involving miniaturization. The physical environment may play a crucial role in modulating the evolution of body size in this natural laboratory.
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