First nearly complete skull of Gallotia auaritae (lower-middle Pleistocene, Squamata, Gallotiinae) and a morphological phylogenetic analysis of the genus Gallotia.

ABSTRACT: The Canary Islands are an Atlantic archipelago known for its high number of endemic species. Among the most known endemic vertebrate species are the giant lizards of the genus Gallotia. We describe the cranial osteology of the first almost complete and articulated fossil skull of the taxon Gallotia auaritae, recovered from the lower-middle Pleistocene of the La Palma island. In this work, X-ray computed microtomography images were used to perform an exhaustive phylogenetic analysis where most of the extant and fossil species of the genus Gallotia were included for first time. This analysis recovered a monophyletic Gallotia clade with similar topology to that of molecular analyses. The newly described specimen shares some characters with the group formed by G. bravoana, G. intermedia and G.

SUBMITTER: Cruzado-Caballero P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6851374 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature