Transient presence of a teiid lizard in the European Eocene suggests transatlantic dispersal and rapid extinction
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Transient presence of a teiid lizard in the European Eocene suggests transatlantic dispersal and rapid extinction Augé Marc Louis 1
&
Brizuela Santiago 2
Received: 28 May 2019 / Revised: 7 October 2019 / Accepted: 10 December 2019 # Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Several teiid specimens (frontal, vertebra, maxillae) are described from the late Eocene of Europe (MP17, Phosphorites du Quercy). The results of phylogenetic analyses confirm that these European Eocene fossils belong to teiid lizards and more specifically to the subfamily Tupinambinae. So far, the Paleogene record of teiids is limited to South America and no occurrence of crown teiids is known in Europe. This disjunct distribution of teiids during the Eocene suggests transatlantic dispersal and this possibility is discussed. The presence of teiids in the European fossil record is brief (limited to standard level MP17). The circumstances that prevented the persistence of an invading clade in Europe are examined. Ecological (e.g. biotic interactions) and/or demographic (Allee effect) processes may have been involved. Keywords Teiid lizards . Eocene . Europe . Dispersal . Extinction debt
Introduction Extant teiids are a New World lizard family, widely distributed in South and Central America and the West Indies with a single native genus in North America (Brizuela and Albino 2004). They are active, diurnal lizards and sometimes considered as the ecological counterparts of Old World lacertid lizards (Pianka and Vitt 2003). The Cenozoic fossil record of Teiidae (sensu Nydam et al. 2007) is nearly limited to South America (Quadros et al. 2018). The earliest records of teiids are from the early Paleogene of Brazil and Argentina (Carvalho 2001; Brizuela and Albino Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-019-00414-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Augé Marc Louis [email protected] Brizuela Santiago [email protected] 1
Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, CR2P, UMR 7207 CNRS, MNHN, Université Paris 6, CP 38, 57 rue Cuvier, Cedex 05,, 75231 Paris, France
2
Departamento de Biologia Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Consejo Nacional de Investigationes Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Consejo, Funes 3250, B7602AYJ Mar del Plata, Argentina
2016). These records are of tupinambine teiids indicating that the family had already differentiated in the two main lineages before the Paleocene–Eocene boundary. The origin of the family would be therefore older (Cretaceous–Paleocene) as also inferred by molecular data (Giugliano et al. 2007). Recently, a Late Cretaceous European radiation of lizards, i.e. Barbatteiidae, has been recognised (Venczel and Codrea 2016; Codrea et al. 2017) and is considered as sister to Teiidae, further sustaining the early origin of the Teiidae. As far as we know, outside South Am
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