[Taxacom] Podocnemididae turtles in northern S America and Madagascar

[Scott Thomson]

Hi John,

Podocnemidae are complex. At a guess I would say Thomson et al 2021 may
help from a molecular perspective. Thats Robert Thomson by the way not me.
However your looking at a family that is a remnant of past diversity with
dozens of genera in the fossil record with an almost global distribution.

To discuss this one in detail I will need to access the fossil record and
in this case its not a group I worked directly on. I would need my computer
to answer that and I am in field till next Monday.

I would hazard this group may be too old also they go back to the Jurassic
and hence the distribution was a very different world. I gather the
Iguanidae are not this old.

>From memory the Podocnemidae were found in the region of Africa / Brazil
that wre connected. There are fossils in Morroco and Egypt, also Europe and
North America. As I recall they were likely found throughout Aftica and
died out on the mainland leaving remnants on Madagascar. They have remained
succsesful in South America in absence of Emydids etc. However I am saying
that from memory I can give you papers that discuss their paleozoogeography
next week.

Cheers Scott

On Sat, Dec 4, 2021, 3:58 AM John Grehan via Taxacom <
taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:

> Scott, I would be interested in your take on the current status of
> the Podocnemididae, if you have any opinion about that. At this moment the
> most recent molecular account I have seen is Vargas-Ramírez et al 2008.
> With two genera in northern South America and one in Madagascar, this group
> would seem to provide a nice biogeographic parallel to that of the iguanas.
>
> John Grehan
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