Lazarussuchus

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Lazarussuchus
Fossil range: late Oligocene to early Miocene
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
Subclass: Diapsida
Infraclass: Archosauromorpha?
Order: Choristodera
Genus: Lazarussuchus
Hecht, 1992
Species
  • L. inexpectatus Hecht, 1992 (type)
  • L. dvoraki Evans and Klembara, 2005

Lazarussuchus (meaning "Lazarus's crocodile", in reference to it being a Lazarus taxon) is a genus of basal choristodere, a type of amphibious reptile, from the late Oligocene and early Miocene of France and the Czech Republic. Two species have been named: the type species L. inexpectatus ("unexpected") (Hecht, 1992) from the late Oligocene of France;[1] and L. dvoraki (for Zdeněk Dvořák), from the early Miocene of the Czech Republic.[2] It was not a large animal; the skull of L. inexpectatus was only about 4.53 centimeters long (1.78 in).[1]

[edit] Lazarus taxon

Main article: Lazarus taxon

A Lazarus taxon is a taxon that has widely-separated appearances in the fossil record, due to observational artifacts from either (local) extinction and later reintroduction, or sampling artifacts. In the case of choristoderes, the group was thought to have gone extinct in the Eocene; however, Lazarussuchus illustrated that they persisted for millions of years after this as small, lizard-like animals.[1] Additionally, because Lazarussuchus appears to have been a very basal choristodere based on phylogenetic analyses, more basal than Late Cretaceous choristoderes[3] and perhaps even more basal than the possible Late Triassic choristodere Pachystropheus, there is the implication of a lengthy ghost lineage of small choristoderes that have not been found or recognized.[2] Evans and Klembara, in their description of L. dvoraki, further postulated that based on the climatic history of Europe in the Miocene and onward, and the fossil record of other European reptiles, small choristoderes could have persisted for longer than the early Miocene; marked cooling did not set in until the late Pliocene.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Hecht, M.K. (1992). "A new choristodere (Reptilia, Diapsida) from the Oligocene of France: an example of the Lazarus effect". Geobios 25: 115–131. 
  2. ^ a b c Evans, Susan E.; and Klembara, Jozef (2005). "A choristoderan reptile {Reptilia: Diapsida) from the Lower Miocene of northwest Bohemia (Czech Republic)". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 25 (1): 171-184. 
  3. ^ Evans, S.E.; and Hecht, M.K. (1993). "A history of an extinct reptilian clade, the Choristodera: longevity, Lazarus-Taxa, and the fossil record". Evolutionary Biology 27: 323–338. 

[edit] External links

  • Ghost lineages - brief article on the fossil record of choristoderes