Solitudo Valenti & Vlachos & Kehlmaier & Fritz & Georgalis & Luján & Miccichè & Sineo & Delfino 2022, GEN. NOV

Autor: Valenti, Pietro, Vlachos, Evangelos, Kehlmaier, Christian, Fritz, Uwe, Georgalis, Georgios L., Luján, Àngel Hernández, Miccichè, Roberto, Sineo, Luca, Delfino, Massimo
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7390584
Popis: SOLITUDO GEN. NOV. Zoobank registration: urn: lsid: zoobank. org:act: 08DE006C-E90B-4605-9711-952D72904E 5F. Type species: Testudo robusta Leith-Adams, 1877; Zubbo Cave = Zebbug Cave, Malta; Middle Pleistocene. Etymology: From the Latin word solitudo, feminine, third declension, meaning solitude, loneliness, in allusion to the insular isolation of these tortoises. Also, the termination - tudo alludes to the name Testudo and the testudinid affinities of this new taxon. Diagnosis: Members of Solitudo belong to Testudinidae because of the ventral fusion of the trochanters of the femur. However, Solitudo species show an incomplete fusion of the trochanters dorsally, in contrast to other testudinid genera in which the trochanters are connected proximally via a rounded ridge. Furthermore, members of Solitudo have femurs that are slender, with a femoral head that is narrower than the combined anteroposterior width of the trochanters and an oblique orientation compared to the anteroposterior plane between 25°–45°, in contrast to other genera with relatively massive femora and broad and less oblique femoral heads, forming an angle that is less than 25° with the anteroposterior plane. Included taxa: Solitudo robusta (Leith-Adams, 1877) comb. nov., Solitudo gymnesica (Bate, 1914) comb. nov., Solitudo sicula sp. nov. Remarks: The exact placement of Solitudo among Testudininae is unclear and should be examined when new material (skull, shell)is discovered.The femur alone, in its distinctiveness, does not allow firm assessment of the phylogenetic relationship with respect to any potentially related taxon (Centrochelys, Stigmochelys, Testudo and Titanochelon). It is noteworthy that the establishment of new fossil taxa on the basis of appendicular elements is not rare among testudinids, and has been used, besides most other insular taxa mentioned already, for the recently described species Chelonoidis marcanoi Turvey et al., 2017 from the Quaternary of Hispaniola (Turvey et al., 2017).
Published as part of Valenti, Pietro, Vlachos, Evangelos, Kehlmaier, Christian, Fritz, Uwe, Georgalis, Georgios L., Luján, Àngel Hernández, Miccichè, Roberto, Sineo, Luca & Delfino, Massimo, 2022, The last of the large-sized tortoises of the Mediterranean islands, pp. 1704-1717 in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 196 (4) on page 1711, DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac044, http://zenodo.org/record/7390583
{"references":["Leith-Adams A. 1877. On gigantic land-tortoises and a small freshwater species from the ossiferous caverns of Malta, together with a list of their fossil fauna; and a note on chelonian remains from the rock cavities of Gibraltar. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 33: 177 - 191.","Bate DMA. 1914. On remains of a gigantic land tortoise (Testudo gymnesicus n. sp.) from the Pleistocene of Menorca. Geological Magazine 1: 100 - 107.","Turvey ST, Almonte J, Hansford J, Scofield RP, Brocca JL, Chapman SD. 2017. A new species of extinct Late Quaternary giant tortoise from Hispaniola. Zootaxa 4277: 1 - 16."]}
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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