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ABSTRACT
Disarticulated remains of palaeobatrachids coming from the early Pleistocene (Gelasian) of Tegelen (The Netherlands) are here described and referred to the new species Palaeobatrachus eurydices. The new species has been included in the first comprehensive phylogenetic analysis considering all known species of the genus Palaeobatrachus and was found to be the sister taxon of the Oligocene/Miocene P. robustus. Palaeobatrachus eurydices + P. robustus form a clade with P. langhae, and this latter clade is sister to all other Palaeobatrachus species. Extreme adaptation to permanent life in water is evidenced in P. eurydices by absence of the fossa cubitalis ventralis, and less developed olecranon on the radioulna. The water-rich and warm environment of Tegelen, indicated by other elements of the fauna such as beavers and the terrapin Mauremys, could have acted as a refugium for these water-dwelling anurans, which were thought to have disappeared from western Europe by the Miocene/Pliocene boundary.
http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:377FD70A-C201-4F95-BB30-BF5CE0D75A3F
SUPPLEMENTAL DATA—Supplemental materials are available for this article for free at www.tandfonline.com/UJVP
Citation for this article: Villa, A., Z. Roček, E. Tschopp, L. W. van den Hoek Ostende, and M. Delfino. 2016. Palaeobatrachus eurydices, sp. nov. (Amphibia, Anura), the last western European palaeobatrachid. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2016.1211664.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T. Mörs supplied information and bibliography about the Hambach locality. E. Vlachos gave useful advice about the Greek spelling of the name Eurydice. The manuscript has been improved by the comments of J.-C. Rage and an anonymous reviewer. This project was supported by Fondi di Ateneo dell'Università di Torino (2013, 2014) and Generalitat de Catalunya (2014 SGR 416 GRC to M.D.). Z. Roček was funded by the research plan RVO67985831 of the Institute of Geology, Czech Academy of Sciences. E. Tschopp has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 609402–2020 Researchers: Train to Move (T2M). We thank the Willi Hennig Society (TNT) and the development team of Mesquite for providing their phylogeny software free online.
