Amphibians and squamate reptiles from the late Miocene (Vallesian) of eastern Morocco (Guefaït-1, Jerada Province)

Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) amphibians and squamates from northeastern Iberia

“…We followed the previous works of Sanchíz (1998), Duffaud and Rage (1999) and Blain (2010Blain ( , 2013 for the classification and nomenclature of lissamphibians. The classification of squamates is according to Estes et al (1988).…”

“…The similar size of the anterior A. Blanco et al / Cretaceous Research xxx (2015) 1e15 6 and posterior condyles of the sacral vertebra, the nearly circular acetabular fossa, the presence of a supraacetabular fossa, a reduced pars descendens, and the shallow dorsal crest of the ilium are characteristic of the subfamily Discoglossinae (sensu Rage and Hossini, 2000; see also Sanchíz, 1998), which includes the genera Paradiscoglossus, Eodiscoglossus, Paralatonia, Latonia and Discoglossus (Blain et al, 2010(Blain et al, , 2013. The ilia from Serrat del Rostiar are similar in shape to those recovered from the Blasi-2 site, which were referred to aff.…”

The geographical and chronological pattern of herpetofaunal Pleistocene extinctions on the Iberian Peninsula

“…Its geographically closest representative, D. koellikeri, lives in northern Morocco and northeastern Algeria (Bons and Geniez, 1996). The genus has been documented in the fossil record of Morocco, in particular from the Late Miocene (Vallesian) at Guefaït 1 (Blain et al, 2013a), and the Latest Pliocene or Earliest Pleistocene at Ahl al Oughlam (Bailon, 2000). Koelliker's Glass Lizard (D. koellikeri) is present today in the deciduous and coniferous forests of the sub-humid bioclimatic level (Bons and Geniez, 1996), with very warm and dry summers and relatively wet and mild winters (Benabid, 1985;Ragala and Refass, 2002).…”

First record of fossil anguines (Squamata; Anguidae) from the Oligocene and Miocene of Turkey

“…Ophisaurus probably migrated to North Africa during the Miocene, as supported by material from the Late Miocene deposits of Morocco (Blain et al 2013). According to Blain et al (2013), Ophisaurus may have entered North Africa during or prior to the Middle Miocene via the land bridge between the Afro-Arabian Plate and Eurasia established from the Early Miocene onwards, following a route that is the opposite from the direction of other squamate clades, such as chamaeleonids and cordylids (Č erňanský 2010, 2012Georgalis et al 2016b). …”

“…Anguis and Pseudopus persist in Europe and Western Asia to the present, but Ophisaurus is now absent from that region and has dispersed during the Cenozoic into North Africa (Blain et al 2013), East Asia and North America (see discussion in Klembara and Rummel 2016;Vasilyan et al 2017). One of the crucial geographical areas, as for the eastward dispersal of Anguinae, is the region of modern day Turkey.…”