A palaeobiogeographical synthesis of Australasian Mesozoic marine tetrapods

Spatiotemporal Distributions of Non-ophidian Ophidiomorphs, With Implications for Their Origin, Radiation, and Extinction

“…Therefore, the most parsimonious explanation is that this area was the area of origin for all pythonomorphs, including dolichosaurs, sometime during the Jurassic. Shallow carbonate shelves bordering southern Laurasia and eastern Gondwana from the Berriasian to the Barremian (Lower Cretaceous) would have provided an easy route by which small pythonomorph lizards, adapted to shallow marine environments, could have spread to Japan and Australia by the Early Cretaceous (Kear et al, 2017). These shallow epicontinental shelves kept the animals comfortably within their tropical to temperate belt, and likely provided very little obstruction to dispersal.…”

A global perspective on Mesozoic marine amniotesSachs, S., Lindgren, J. & Kear, B.P., February 2019. A global perspective on Mesozoic marine amniotes. Alcheringa 42, 457–460. ISSN 0311-5518. Sven Sachs [sachs.pal@gmail.com], Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld, Abteilung Geowissenschaften, 33602 Bielefeld, Germany; Johan Lindgren [johan.lindgren@geol.lu.se], Department of Geology, Lund University, 223 62 Lund, Sweden; Benjamin P. Kear [benjamin.kear@em.uu.se], Muse

“…Content from the 5th International Mosasaur Meeting special issue of Alcheringa synthesises current studies from Australasia, Europe, the USA, and the Middle East. Kear et al (2018) present a palaeobiogeographical review of the Mesozoic marine tetrapod assemblages from Australasia. These include finds from Australia, New Zealand and the Chatham Islands, Timor, and New Caledonia, and represent a high diversity of Triassic-Cretaceous groups, such as possibly euryhaline temnospondyl amphibians, ichthyosaurians, plesiosaurians, chelonioid sea turtles, and various marine squamates.…”

El registro fósil de plesiosaurios (Diapsida, Sauropterygia) en el Perú

“…Entre las modificaciones del plan corporal básico de un tetrápodo se destaca la modificación de las extremidades en aletas con una marcada hiperfalangia (Romer 1966, O'Keefe 2001, Benson & Druckenmiller 2014. El registro fósil de este grupo es cosmopolita, habiéndose registrado en todos los continentes, incluyendo la Antártida (Welles 1952, 1962, Brown 1981, Carpenter 1999, O'Keefe 2004, O'Gorman 2012, Otero et al 2014Bardet et al 2014;Bensony Druckenmiller 2014, Kear et al 2018. Dentro del clado Plesiosauria, se distinguen dos morfotipos basados en sus proporciones corporales: plesiosauriomorfo y pliosauriomorfo (Welles 1943, O'Keefe 2002, los primeros poseen cuello largo y cabeza pequeña y los segundos cuello corto y cabeza alargada y grande.…”