Unusual morphology in the mid-Cretaceous lizard Oculudentavis

Bolet, Arnau; Stanley, Edward L.; Daza, Juan D.; Arias, J.E.; Čerňanský, Andrej; Vidal‐García, Marta; Bauer, Aaron M.; Bevitt, Joseph J.; Peretti, Adolf; Evans, SE

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2021.05.040

Cited by 467 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…This species and Oculudentavis khaungraae Xing et al, 2020 were classified within Squamata 39 , one of the biggest orders containing lizards, snakes and amphisbaenians or worm lizards. Bolet et al 39 focused on the description of the new taxon, but not on the diverse data that the abundant syninclusions of the piece can provide. One interesting bioinclusion is a large beetle probably of the superfamily Elateroidea.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Necrophagy by insects in Oculudentavis and other lizard body fossils preserved in Cretaceous amber

Solórzano-Kraemer

Peñalver

Herbert

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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When a vertebrate carcass begins its decay in terrestrial environments, a succession of different necrophagous arthropod species, mainly insects, are attracted. Trophic aspects of the Mesozoic environments are of great comparative interest, to understand similarities and differences with extant counterparts. Here, we comprehensively study several exceptional Cretaceous amber pieces, in order to determine the early necrophagy by insects (flies in our case) on lizard specimens, ca. 99 Ma old. To obtain well-supported palaeoecological data from our amber assemblages, special attention has been paid in the analysis of the taphonomy, succession (stratigraphy), and content of the different amber layers, originally resin flows. In this respect, we revisited the concept of syninclusion, establishing two categories to make the palaeoecological inferences more accurate: eusyninclusions and parasyninclusions. We observe that resin acted as a “necrophagous trap”. The lack of dipteran larvae and the presence of phorid flies indicates decay was in an early stage when the process was recorded. Similar patterns to those in our Cretaceous cases have been observed in Miocene ambers and actualistic experiments using sticky traps, which also act as “necrophagous traps”; for example, we observed that flies were indicative of the early necrophagous stage, but also ants. In contrast, the absence of ants in our Late Cretaceous cases confirms the rareness of ants during the Cretaceous and suggests that early ants lacked this trophic strategy, possibly related to their sociability and recruitment foraging strategies, which developed later in the dimensions we know them today. This situation potentially made necrophagy by insects less efficient in the Mesozoic.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Necrophagy by insects in Oculudentavis and other lizard body fossils preserved in Cretaceous amber

Solórzano-Kraemer

Peñalver

Herbert

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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“…We should also consider the distortion of fossil specimens in reconstructing the sizes of soft structures based on preserved scleral ossicle rings. Various methods have been proposed to retrodeform two‐dimensional or three‐dimensional preserved fossil specimens by using a set of liner or angular measurements (Motani, 1997), landmarks (Bolet et al, 2021; Molnar et al, 2012; Tallman et al, 2014), and geometric morphometrics (Angielczyk & Sheets, 2007; Hedrick & Dodson, 2013). Ideally, such retrodeformation should be performed on fossil specimens before applying the correlations between the skeletal and soft tissue structures found in extant squamates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between hard and soft tissue structures of the eye in extant lizards

Yamashita

Tsuihiji

2022

Journal of Morphology

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The sizes of the eye structures, such as the lens diameter and the axial length, are important factors for the visual performance and are considered to be related to the mode of life. Although the size of these soft structures cannot be directly observed in fossil taxa, such information may be obtained from measuring size and morphology of the bony scleral ossicle ring, which is present in the eyes of extant saurospids, excluding crocodiles and snakes, and is variously preserved in fossil taxa.However, there have been only a few studies investigating the relationships between the size, the scleral ossicle ring, and soft structures of the eye. We investigated such relationships among the eye structures in extant Squamata, to establish the basis for inferring the size of the soft structures in the eye in fossil squamates. Three-dimensional morphological data on the eye and head region of 59 lizard species covering most major clades were collected using micro-computed tomography scanners. Strong correlations were found between the internal and external diameters of the scleral ossicle ring and soft structures. The tight correlations found here will allow reliable estimations of the sizes of soft structures and inferences on the visual performance and mode of life in fossil squamates, based on the diameters of their preserved scleral ossicle rings. Furthermore, the comparison of the allometric relationships between structures in squamates eyes with those in avian eyes suggest the possibility that the similarities of these structures closely reflect the mechanism of accommodation.

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“…Global deformation was quantified as the distance between corresponding landmarks (i.e., vertices), similarly to previous studies (e.g., Di Vincenzo et al, 2017;Schlager et al, 2018;Cirilli et al, 2020;Bolet et al, 2021). However, shape variation between the original specimen and the reconstruction was visualised as heat maps using vertex colours in MAYA through a custom MAYA Embedded Language (MEL) script (Supplementary Material).…”

Section: Quantification Of Deformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topology-Based Three-Dimensional Reconstruction of Delicate Skeletal Fossil Remains and the Quantification of Their Taphonomic Deformation

et al. 2022

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Taphonomic and diagenetic processes inevitably distort the original skeletal morphology of fossil vertebrate remains. Key aspects of palaeobiological datasets may be directly impacted by such morphological deformation, such as taxonomic diagnoses and phylogenetic hypotheses, interpretations of the shape and orientation of anatomical structures, and assessments of interspecific and intraspecific variation. In order to overcome these ubiquitous challenges we present a novel reconstruction workflow combining retopology and retrodeformation, allowing the original morphology of both symmetrically and asymmetrically damaged areas of fossils to be reconstructed. As case studies, we present idealised three-dimensional reconstructions of the sternum of the crownward stem-bird Ichthyornis dispar, and cervical vertebrae of the diplodocid sauropod Galeamopus pabsti. Multiple Ichthyornis sterna were combined into a single, idealised composite representation through superimposition and alignment of retopologised models, and this composite was subsequently retrodeformed. The Galeamopus vertebrae were individually retrodeformed and symmetrised. Our workflow enabled us to quantify deformation of individual specimens with respect to our reconstructions, and to characterise global and local taphonomic deformation. Our workflow can be integrated with geometric morphometric approaches to enable quantitative morphological comparisons among multiple specimens, as well as quantitative interpolation of “mediotypes” of serially homologous elements such as missing vertebrae, haemal arches, or ribs.

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Unusual morphology in the mid-Cretaceous lizard Oculudentavis

Abstract: Unusual morphology in the mid-Cretaceous lizard OculudentavisHighlights d A new species of the reptile in amber, Oculudentavis, is described d Oculudentavis is a bizarre lizard, not a bird d The bird-like appearance of Oculudentavis is due to convergence in skull proportions

Cited by 467 publications

References 38 publications

Necrophagy by insects in Oculudentavis and other lizard body fossils preserved in Cretaceous amber

Necrophagy by insects in Oculudentavis and other lizard body fossils preserved in Cretaceous amber

The relationship between hard and soft tissue structures of the eye in extant lizards

Topology-Based Three-Dimensional Reconstruction of Delicate Skeletal Fossil Remains and the Quantification of Their Taphonomic Deformation

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