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Making New Out of the Old: Recent Biological Advances on...
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Making New Out of the Old: Recent Biological Advances on Mesozoic Marine Reptiles

A special issue of Diversity (ISSN 1424-2818). This special issue belongs to the section "Phylogeny and Evolution".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2024) | Viewed by 5750

Image courtesy of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Nathalie Bardet

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre de Recherche en Paléontologie de Paris, UMR 7207 - CNRS, MNHN, SU, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, CP 38 – 57 rue Cuvier, 75005 Paris, France
Interests: systematics; phylogeny; palaeobiogeography; palaeobiology; palaeoecology and science history of Late Cretaceous marine reptiles from the northern and southern margins of the Mediterranean Tethys

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

A secondary return to aquatic life is a major evolutionary phenomenon in vertebrate history. Although some pioneers returned to aquatic life by the end of the Paleozoic era, this phenomenon is best illustrated during the Mesozoic (with reptiles) and Cenozoic (with mammals) eras.

During the Mesozoic era, about ten clades of reptiles underwent a dramatic return to aquatic life; in doing so, they colonized most marine environments, exhibiting great systematic diversity and astonishing ecological disparity. Many were among the greatest marine predators of their time, and some, such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, were iconic clades of large Mesozoic ‘gigantic saurians’ that mirrored terrestrial dinosaurs.

These marine reptiles illustrate a mosaic of morphological, physiological and ecological adaptations to an aquatic lifestyle, some of which are convergent with those found in Cenozoic marine mammals, and others completely unique.

This volume aims to present recent biological advances made through the discovery of exceptionally preserved specimens and/or the use of modern methods. As such, it will focus mainly (but not exclusively) on topics such as locomotion modes and sensory systems, physiology and metabolism, reproduction and predation modes, and soft tissues and colors.

Dr. Nathalie Bardet
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Mesozoic
  • marine reptiles
  • biology

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

48 pages, 65908 KiB  
Article
Callovian Marine Reptiles of European Russia
by Nikolay Zverkov, Maxim Arkhangelsky, Denis Gulyaev, Alexey Ippolitov and Alexey Shmakov
Diversity 2024, 16(5), 290; https://doi.org/10.3390/d16050290 - 10 May 2024
Viewed by 1057
Abstract
Our knowledge of marine reptiles of the Callovian age (Middle Jurassic) is majorly based on the collections from the Oxford Clay Formation of England, which yielded a diverse marine reptile fauna of plesiosaurians, ichthyosaurians, and thalattosuchians. However, outside of Western Europe, marine reptile [...] Read more.
Our knowledge of marine reptiles of the Callovian age (Middle Jurassic) is majorly based on the collections from the Oxford Clay Formation of England, which yielded a diverse marine reptile fauna of plesiosaurians, ichthyosaurians, and thalattosuchians. However, outside of Western Europe, marine reptile remains of this age are poorly known. Here, we survey marine reptiles from the Callovian stage of European Russia. The fossils collected over more than a century from 28 localities are largely represented by isolated bones and teeth, although partial skeletons are also known. In addition to the previously described rhomaleosaurid and metriorhynchids, we identify pliosaurids of the genera Liopleurodon and Simolestes; cryptoclidid plesiosaurians, including Cryptoclidus eurymerus, Muraenosaurus sp., and cf. Tricleidus, and ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurians, including the iconic Ophthalmosaurus icenicus. These findings expand the ranges of several Callovian marine reptile taxa far to the Eastern Europe, and support the exchange of marine reptile faunas between Western and Eastern European seas in the middle to late Callovian. However, some specimens from the lower Callovian of European Russia show differences from typical representatives of the middle Callovian Oxford Clay fauna, possibly representing the earlier stages of evolution of some of these marine reptiles not yet recorded in Western Europe or elsewhere. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Making New Out of the Old: Recent Biological Advances on Mesozoic Marine Reptiles)
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12 pages, 8443 KiB  
Article
Exceptional In Situ Preservation of Chondrocranial Elements in a Coniacian Mosasaurid from Colombia
by María Eurídice Páramo-Fonseca, José Alejandro Narváez-Rincón, Cristian David Benavides-Cabra and Christian Felipe Yanez-Leaño
Diversity 2024, 16(5), 285; https://doi.org/10.3390/d16050285 - 10 May 2024
Viewed by 1456
Abstract
The first record of well-preserved chondrocranial elements in mosasaurids is here described. These elements are preserved in situ in a Coniacian skull found in north-central Colombia, inside a calcareous concretion. Based on a 3D model generated from computed tomography scans, we identified elements [...] Read more.
The first record of well-preserved chondrocranial elements in mosasaurids is here described. These elements are preserved in situ in a Coniacian skull found in north-central Colombia, inside a calcareous concretion. Based on a 3D model generated from computed tomography scans, we identified elements of the nasal and orbitotemporal regions. Our descriptions show that in this specimen, the chondrocranium was reduced, more so than in most lacertilians (including their closest recent relatives, the varanids), but not as severely as in snakes or amphisbaenians (which have an extremely reduced chondrocranium and limbs). The new evidence suggests that the reduction in the chondrocranium in mosasaurids could be related to modification of their limbs when adapting to aquatic environments, but also that in mosasaurids, the olfactory tract was reduced, and the optic muscle insertions occurred mainly in the interorbital septum. The exceptional preservation of the chondrocranial elements in the specimen is facilitated by a gray mineralization covering them. XRD analysis and thin section observations indicated that this mineralization is composed of microcrystalline quartz and calcite. We infer that this material was produced by a partial silicification process promoted by lower pH microenvironments associated with bacterial breakdown of non-biomineralized tissues during early diagenesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Making New Out of the Old: Recent Biological Advances on Mesozoic Marine Reptiles)
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19 pages, 5577 KiB  
Article
How Elongated? The Pattern of Elongation of Cervical Centra of Elasmosaurus platyurus with Comments on Cervical Elongation Patterns among Plesiosauromorphs
by José Patricio O’Gorman
Diversity 2024, 16(2), 106; https://doi.org/10.3390/d16020106 - 7 Feb 2024
Viewed by 2565
Abstract
Elasmosaurids comprise some of the most extreme morphotypes of plesiosaurs. Thus, the study of their neck and vertebrae elongation patterns plays a crucial role in understanding the anatomy of elasmosaurids. In this study, the taphonomic distortion of the holotype of Elasmosaurus platyurus and its [...] Read more.
Elasmosaurids comprise some of the most extreme morphotypes of plesiosaurs. Thus, the study of their neck and vertebrae elongation patterns plays a crucial role in understanding the anatomy of elasmosaurids. In this study, the taphonomic distortion of the holotype of Elasmosaurus platyurus and its effects on the vertebral length index (VLI) values are evaluated, and a new index to describe the neck is proposed (MAVLI = mean value of the vertebral elongation index of the anterior two-thirds of neck vertebrae). The results provide a strong foundation for a new scheme of neck elongation patterns that divide the diversity of the neck elongation of plesiosauriomorphs into three categories: not-elongate (MAVLI < 95 and Max VLI < 100), elongate (125 > MAVLI > 95 and 100 < Max VLI < 135), and extremely elongated (MAVLI > 125 and Max VLI > 135). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Making New Out of the Old: Recent Biological Advances on Mesozoic Marine Reptiles)
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