Una tortuga pleurodira del Congo en el XIX Annual Meeting de la EAVP

Entre los trabajos sobre tortugas fósiles presentados por parte del Grupo de Biología Evolutiva de la UNED en el recientemente celebrado congreso internacional de la European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists (EAVP) se incluye uno con el título: “A new member of Erymnochelyini (Testudines, Pleurodira) from the early Pliocene of central Africa”. El resumen de esta contribución científica es el siguiente:

The pleurodiran turtle Erymnochelys madagascariensis (the ‘Madagascan big-headed turtle’) is the only representative of Erymnochelyini (Pelomedusoides, Podocnemididae) that is part of the current biodiversity. Erymnochelys was traditionally used as a wastebasket taxon, but the extant species from Madagascar is currently considered as the only valid representative of the genus. In the early 1990s, the remains of several groups of turtles were reported in some Early Pliocene (Zanclean) outcrops of the Sinda beds, in the Sinda-Mohari region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Among them, several postcranial elements were attributed to Erymnochelys sp. Unpublished cranial remains from that locality, exclusively corresponding to the anterior area of the skull, were subsequently cited in papers published over the subsequent two decades. These specimens were recognized, without justification, as compatible with the extant Erymnochelys madagascariensis. Knowledge about the extinct representatives of the Erymnochelyini lineage has increased remarkably in recent years. In fact, most of them correspond to genera defined in the 21st century. In this sense, the attribution of the taxon from the Sinda-Mohari region to the genus Erymnochelys has been recently indicated, without justification, as incorrect. The study of abundant and well-preserved cranial material from this Pliocene locality, not only corresponding to the anterior region of the skull but also to elements that make it possible to know most of the cranial anatomy, allows me to justify its attribution to a new taxon. It corresponds to the only extinct member of Erymnochelyini represented in the Neogene record by more than one skull.

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Más información:

• Referencia: Pérez-García, A. 2022. A new member of Erymnochelyini (Testudines, Pleurodira) from the early Pliocene of central Africa. Abstract book of the 19th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists: 155.