Descripción anatómica de un conjunto apendicular articulado del Cretácico Superior ibérico en el XVIII Annual Meeting de la EAVP

La pasada semana, entre los días 5 y 9 de julio, se celebró la XVIII edición del congreso científico anual llevado a cabo por la European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists (EAVP). El encuentro, con sede en Benevento (Italia), se realizó en formato online. Entre los trabajos presentados se encuentra aquel titulado “A large anguimorphan suggests the presence of varaniforms in the Iberian Peninsula prior to the K-Pg boundary”, presentado en formato de póster, en el que participan miembros del Grupo de Biología Evolutiva de la UNED. Su resumen, en inglés, es el siguiente:

Basturs is a Maastrichtian (Upper Cretaceous) fossil site located in the eastern area of the Tremp Syncline (Lleida, Catalonia, Spain). It is regarded as one of the European paleontological regions that have yielded one of the largest collections of hadrosaur skeletons in the continent, being also relevant for its record of sauropod eggs. We report here a previously undescribed fossil remain from Basturs, housed in the Museu de la Conca Dellà (Lleida, Spain). The specimen corresponds to a partial left hindlimb preserving two distal tarsals and the metatarsals II to V. It is attributable to Squamata, and more specifically to Anguimorpha, a clade so far not identified at this site. More specifically, it is potentially attributable to Varaniformes, a group which had not been recognized until now in the Cretaceous record of the Iberian Peninsula. These fossil remains correspond to a large individual, with an estimated snout-vent length close to 60 cm. Therefore, it is identified as one of the largest Mesozoic terrestrial lizards so far known, and possibly the largest from the European fossil record. Other large squamate remains are known for the Maastrichtian record of the Iberian Peninsula, but all of them were attributable to Mosasauria instead of terrestrial taxa.

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Referencia: Cabezuelo Hernández A., Bolet A., Torices A., Pérez-García A., 2021. A large anguimorphan suggests the presence of varaniforms in the Iberian Peninsula prior to the K-Pg boundary. In: Belvedere M., Díez Díaz V., Mecozzi B., Sardella R (eds.). Abstract book of the XVIII annual conference of the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists, online, 5th- 9th July 2021. Palaeovertebrata, 44, p.45.