Interpreting character variation in turtles: Araripemys barretoi (Pleurodira: Pelomedusoides) from the Araripe Basin, Early Cretaceous of Northeastern Brazil
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Paleontology, Taxonomy, Zoology
- Keywords
- Araripe, Sexual dimorphism, Cretaceous, Ontogeny, Araripemys, Intraspecific variation, Polymorphism
- Copyright
- © 2018 Limaverde et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Interpreting character variation in turtles: Araripemys barretoi (Pleurodira: Pelomedusoides) from the Araripe Basin, Early Cretaceous of Northeastern Brazil. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27262v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27262v1
Abstract
The Araripe Basin (Northeastern Brazil) has yielded a rich Cretaceous fossil fauna of both vertebrates and invertebrates found mainly in the Crato and Romualdo Formations, of Aptian and Albian ages respectively. Among the vertebrates, the turtles were proved quite diverse, with several specimens retrieved and five valid species described to this date for the Romualdo Fm. There were also records of turtles from Ipubi and Crato Fms., mainly fragmentary material which precluded proper specific identification; however, Araripemys barretoi is supposed to occur on both Crato and Romualdo Fms. Here we describe thirteen specimens of A. barretoi - including the first description of an almost complete individual, bearing a skull, from the Crato Fm. We report a great amount of morphological variation, interpreted as being essentially of intraspecific nature, including individual, sexual and ontogenetic variation.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Variation in the opisthotic of A. barretoi
A) Posteromedial margin convex in THUg 1357; B) Posteromedial margin concave in AMNH 24453.
