Holocene amphibians and reptiles from Voroncha (Belarus): Comparative osteology, paleopathology and paleobiogeography

ABSTRACT

The Voroncha site is an accumulation of Holocene small vertebrates, from which numerous amphibian and reptile remains have been recovered continuously over the course of many years. The accumulation has been said to represent a badger or fox den on a gully slope. The latest available collection contains some 11,538 herpetofauna bones suitable for systematic identification. This assemblage includes two caudates (Lissotriton vulgaris and Triturus cristatus), five anurans (Bufo bufo, Pelophylax lessonae, Pelophylax ridibundus, Rana arvalis, and Rana temporaria), one anguid lizard (Anguis fragilis sl), one lacertid lizard (Zootoca vivipara), and two snakes (Natrix natrix and Vipera berus). This paper describes the comparative characteristics of these bones. The considerable quantity of fossils helps to better visualize the identification criteria for the higher taxonomic categories. In addition, the great number of the bones identified at the species level reveals considerable intraspecific variability for some elements. This study complements previous studies by adding L. vulgaris, T. cristatus, B. bufo, P. ridibundus, R. arvalis, Z. vivipara, N. natrix and V. berus to the site’s faunal record. Voroncha represents the first fossil record for caudates in the region of Belarus and the first record for Z. vivipara in the western East European Plain.

KEYWORDS:

• Holocene (Atlantic period)
• Belarus
• amphibians
• reptiles
• systematic composition
• comparative osteology

Acknowledgments

The authors thank D. L. Ivanov (Minsk, Belarus) for providing the fossil material, two anonymous reviewers and the editor Gareth Dyke for reading the manuscript and useful recommendations. V. Ratnikov thanks Babushkin A.P. for introducing corrections in English in a previous version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by project AGAUR 2017 SGR-859 of the Government of Catalonia.