Fossil lizard from central Europe resolves the origin of large body size and herbivory in giant Canary Island lacertids |
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| Authors: | Andrej Čerňanský Jozef Klembara Krister T Smith |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz‐Institut für Evolutions‐ und Biodiversit?tsforschung, Berlin, Germany;2. Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Palaeoanthropology and Messel Research, Frankfurt am Main, Germany;3. Geological Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia;4. Department of Ecology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia |
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| Abstract: | The endemic Canary Island lizard clade Gallotia, which includes the largest members of Europe's dominant reptile group, Lacertidae, is one of the classic examples of insular gigantism. For the first time we use fossil data to test the evolutionary reasons for the association between gigantism and herbivory. We describe an almost completely preserved skeleton of J anosikia ulmensis comb. nov. from the early Miocene of Ulm, Germany (MN 2a, ～ 22 Mya). We show that this species and Oligocene Pseudeumeces cadurcensis (Filhol, 1877) are in fact crown lacertids, and the first known pre‐Quaternary record of the total clade of Gallotia. Pseudeumeces confirms the early origin of crown Lacertidae in the Palaeogene of Europe. More importantly, these fossil taxa show that large body size was already achieved on the European mainland by the early Miocene. Furthermore, Pseudeumeces and Janosikia were faunivorous, thus demonstrating that insularity, not large body size, was crucial to the evolution of herbivory in this lineage. Body size change in Gallotia was more complex than previously thought, encompassing size increase e.g. in the extinct Gallotia goliath (Mertens, 1942)], but more commonly involving miniaturization. The physical environment may play a crucial role in modulating the evolution of body size in this natural laboratory. |
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| Keywords: | Canary Islands Europe island rule lacertid phylogeny– Palaeogene Squamata |
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