See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259080631 Article: Mesozoic and Tertiary Anura of Laurasia Article in Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments · November 2013 DOI: 10.1007/s12549-013-0131-y CITATIONS READS 38 2,173 1 author: Zbyněk Roček The Czech Academy of Sciences - Institute of Geology 105 PUBLICATIONS 2,024 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Revision of fossil frogs of the genus Palaeobatrachus View project All content following this page was uploaded by Zbyněk Roček on 29 May 2015. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Mesozoic and Tertiary Anura of Laurasia Zbyněk Roček Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments ISSN 1867-1594 Volume 93 Number 4 Palaeobio Palaeoenv (2013) 93:397-439 DOI 10.1007/s12549-013-0131-y 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer- Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self- archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Palaeobio Palaeoenv (2013) 93:397–439 DOI 10.1007/s12549-013-0131-y REVIEW Mesozoic and Tertiary Anura of Laurasia ZbyněkRoček Received: 4 April 2013 /Revised: 27 August 2013 /Accepted: 16 September 2013 /Published online: 6 November 2013 # Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstract Anurans of Laurasia have a long history that begins when Eurasian and American herpetofaunas reached their peak with the earliest known anuran, Prosalirus, from the Early taxonomic diversities. In the Pliocene, some extant anuran spe- Jurassic of Arizona, USA. At that time, western Laurasia cies appeared, but at the same time taxa that had been dominant (North America) was still connected with Gondwana, so throughout the Oligocene and Miocene (e.g. Eopelobates, faunal interchange was still possible between those parts of palaeobatrachids) became extinct during this interval or during the former Pangean supercontinent. The anuran fossil record the subsequent Pleistocene glaciation. The brief biochronological from the Jurassic and Cretaceous of Laurasia is mainly repre- synopsis presented here is followed by a systematic review of sented by disarticulated skeletal elements similar to those of taxa with their diagnoses and published data on their stratigraphic Prosalirus (e.g. amphicoelous vertebrae indicating the pres- and geographic distributions. ence of continuous notochord; ilia without dorsal crest and dorsal tubercle; small body size). Because the morphology of Keywords Anura . Laurasia . Taxonomic diagnoses . the ilium, the most commonly preserved element of Mesozoic Systematic review . Stratigraphy . Distribution anurans, superficially recalls that of Recent Alytes, Bombina or Pelobates, Mesozoic anurans often were assigned to discoglossids and pelobatids. The Cretaceous portion of the Introduction Laurasian anuran record is marked by the appearance of procoelous and opisthocoelous vertebrae, ilia bearing a dorsal The aim of this paper is to summarise the Mesozoic and Tertiary crest and dorsal tubercle (although such ilia may rarely be record of anurans from Europe, Asia and North America, the found as early as in the Jurassic) and larger body sizes. three modern land masses in the Northern Hemisphere that were Cretaceous anuran assemblages include a mix of generalised once part of the single supercontinent of Laurasia. This paper taxa that are comparable to Recent basal anurans and more updates and complements earlier reviews (e.g. Holman 2003; specialised taxa lacking clear affinities with any extant an- Rage and Roček 2003;Roček 2000;Roček and Rage 2000a; urans. Some of these forms survived into the Paleocene, but in Sanchiz 1998a) by documenting new occurrences and taxa and general anuran faunas on all Laurasian continents were mark- presenting new interpretations. In the first part of this paper, I edly depleted in the Paleocene. Major groups of anurans provide an annotated, biochronological synopsis of the appeared in the Eocene. The early Miocene is the interval Laurasian anuran record, beginning with the Early Jurassic when anurans are first recorded, through to the end of Pliocene when the Recent herpetofauna was basically established. In the second part of this paper, I provide brief This article is a contribution to the special issue “Mesozoic and Cenozoic systematic accounts for all anuran taxa currently recognised lissamphibian and squamate assemblages of Laurasia” from the Mesozoic and Tertiary of Laurasia. These accounts Z. Roček (*) include a diagnosis (mainly as they were published, only slightly Department of Palaeobiology, Geological Institute, Academy of re-arranged for the sake of brevity), details on stratigraphic and Sciences of the Czech Republic, Rozvojová 135, 165 00 Prague 6, Suchdol, Czech Republic geographic occurrences and additional information or comments e-mail: [email protected] as appropriate. Ideally, a diagnosis should be a brief list of Author's personal copy 398 Palaeobio Palaeoenv (2013) 93:397–439 apomorphies, by which a given taxon can be distinguished from Biochronological synopsis other taxa of the same group (Bell et al. 2010). The intention of these systematic accounts is not to provide a comprehensive Prosalirus bitis, the earliest known anuran, was recovered revision of Mesozoic and Tertiary anurans of Laurasia, but to from the Early Jurassic age Kayenta Formation in Arizona, provide an up-to-date, encyclopedic treatment of currently USA (Jenkins and Shubin 1998; Shubin and Jenkins 1995). recognised taxa. The material consists of conglomerates of disarticulated Because this paper deals with anurans, neither of the Early bones, of which the presence of amphicoelous vertebrae with Triassic proanurans (i.e. Czatkobatrachus from southern a broad notochordal canal, sacral vertebra with narrow and Poland or Triadobatrachus from Madagascar; see Evans and slightly posteriorly inclined diapophyses and ilia with the Borsuk-Białynicka 2009;Roček and Rage 2000b) are consid- shaft rounded dorsally and lacking any crest or tubercle ered further, except to note that the presence of those (Fig. 1)suggeststhatProsalirus was a poor jumper. As the proanurans in widely separate places suggests that the ances- notochord obviously passed through the sacro-urostylar artic- tors of anurans were widely distributed on the Triassic super- ulation into the urostyle, the joint could not be bicondylar, a continent Pangaea. condition that allows for rotation of the pelvis in the vertical Although India is Gondwanan by origin and had merged plane and is typical of anurans that are good jumpers with Laurasia by the end of Cretaceous or in the earliest (Emerson 1979). Palaeogeographical reconstructions for the Cainozoic (the date of the earliest terrestrial contact between Pliensbachian suggest that Prosalirus was not geographically Indian and Eurasia is still matter of discussion), its anurans are isolated from the slightly younger, Early Jurassic anurans included in this review just to demonstrate the probability or Notobatrachus and Vieraella in South America because improbability of the Gondwanan origin of some taxa (e.g. Laurasia had not yet separated from Gondwana. A fragmen- Eopelobates). tary iliac shaft has been reported from the Early Jurassic age (Hettangian through Pliensbachian) Kota Formation of India and attributed to pelobatids (Yadagiri 1986). The Kota spec- Anatomical abbreviations imen indicates that a Prosalirus-like grade anuran occurred in the Indian portion of Gondwana. This formerly Gondwanan F, length of femur; LC, length of head; LtC, width of head; anuran subsequently became part of the Laurasian assemblage – SVL, snout vent length, measured in fossil anurans between when the Indian subcontinent collided with the rest of Asia. anterior end of premaxillary symphysis to posterior end of Because all of the above-mentioned Early Jurassic anurans ischia; TF, length of tibiofibula; V2,V3, etc., presacral verte- and, indeed, most other Mesozoic anurans lacked a dorsal brae, numbered anteriorly to posteriorly. crest on their iliac shafts (a situation analogous with some Recent taxa, such as Pelobates), the assumption is that those Institutional abbreviations anurans were poor jumpers. The next youngest Laurasian anuran is Eodiscoglossus GPIB, Steinmann-Institut für Geologie, Mineralogie und oxoniensis, which is based on isolated skeletal elements from Paläontologie of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, the Middle Jurassic of Kirtlington, UK (Evans et al. 1990). Germany; MCZ, Museum of Comparative Zoology, These bones represent the earliest known anuran in Europe. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; MNA, Museum of Following the Pliensbachian, there is a gap of about 40 Ma Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA; MNCN, Museo in the North American