Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: The Early Cretaceous deposits of the Tetori Group of western Japan have yielded a diverse wetland vertebrate fauna including both aquatic and terrestrial components.The latter include several lizards, three of which have been named and described in detail: Kaganaias hakusanensis, a long-bodied aquatic lizard; Kuwajimalla kagaensis, a herbivorous borioteiioid; and Sakurasaurus shokawensis, a relative of the Chinese Jehol genus Yabeinosaurus.Here we describe lizard material from the Shiramine locality representing five or six additional taxa, three of which are named herein: a small lizard represented by two associations, but of unresolved phylogenetic position; a slightly larger lizard with tricuspid teeth that is related to borioteiioids; and a bizarre lizard with bicuspid teeth represented by a single, but morphologically unique, jaw.The three additional lizard morphotypes are unnamed.One has bicuspid teeth but unspecialised jaws.The second has small unicuspid teeth in a dentary bearing a deep coronoid process and resembling the dentary of the enigmatic Late Cretaceous Mongolian Myrmecodaptria microphagosa.The third morphotype is represented by a single fragmentary specimen and has small teeth in a deep jaw.Together, the Kuwajima lizards form a phylogenetically and morphologically diverse assemblage.
Source: Palaeontologia Electronica
DOI: 10.26879/519
Authors: SE Evans, R Matsumoto
Language: English
Subfield: Paleontology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Awards: On paleoecosystem and paleoenvironment of the Early Cretaceous Tetori Group ; promotion of the public understanding of the fossils, local museums and visitor centers, site protection in the local community, 和紙から機能紙への技術革新, Paleontological and evolutionary developmental biological studies on body elongation, limb reduction and adaptive radiation in the evolution of lizards
OpenAlex ID: W2125708653