View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by The Research Repository @ WVU (West Virginia University) Faculty Scholarship 2017 The oldest record of aquatic amniote congenital scoliosis Tomasz Szczygielski Dawid Surmik Agnieszka Kapuscinska Bruce M. Rotheschild Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications RESEARCH ARTICLE The oldest record of aquatic amniote congenital scoliosis Tomasz Szczygielski1*, Dawid Surmik2,3, Agnieszka Kapuścińska1, Bruce M. Rothschild4,5 1 Institute of Paleobiology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, 2 Park of Science & Human Evolution, KrasiejoÂw, Poland, 3 Faculty of Earth Sciences, University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland, 4 Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, 5 West Virginia University School of Medicine, Morgantown, West Virginia, United States of America *
[email protected] a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 Abstract a1111111111 We report the first occurrence of congenital scoliosis in an early Permian aquatic parareptile, Stereosternum tumidum from Parana state, Brazil. The spine malformation is caused by a congenital hemivertebra. These observations give insight into the biomechanical aspects of underwater locomotion in an axial skeleton-compromised aquatic amniote. This is the oldest OPEN ACCESS record of a hemivertebra in an aquatic animal. Citation: Szczygielski T, Surmik D, Kapuścińska A, Rothschild BM (2017) The oldest record of aquatic amniote congenital scoliosis. PLoS ONE 12(9): e0185338. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0185338 Editor: William Oki Wong, Institute of Botany, CHINA Introduction Received: June 22, 2017 Mesosaurs are early Permian aquatic amniotes, nested at the base of the Parareptilia[1±4]. Accepted: September 11, 2017 They include three monotypic genera (Brazilosaurus sanpauloensis Shikama [5], Mesosaurus Published: September 21, 2017 tenuidens Gervais [6], and Stereosternum tumidum Cope [7]) known from South America and Africa [5±15].