Interpreting character variation in turtles: Araripemys barretoi (Pleurodira: Pelomedusoides) from the Araripe Basin, Early Cretaceous of Northeastern Brazil

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1 Centro de Ciências, Departamento de Geologia, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil
2 Department of Geology and Paleontology, Museu Nacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
3 Departamento de Biologia, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil
4 Department of Forensic Medicine, Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark
5 Section Biosystematics, Zoological Museum (SNM, Copenhagen University), Copenhagen, Denmark
6 Fur Museum (Museum Saling), Fur, DK-7884, Denmark
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27262v1
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
Limaverde S, Pêgas RV, Damasceno R, Villa C, Oliveira G, Bonde N, Leal MEC. 2018. Interpreting character variation in turtles: Araripemys barretoi (Pleurodira: Pelomedusoides) from the Araripe Basin, Early Cretaceous of Northeastern Brazil. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27262v1

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.

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.27262v1/supp-1