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      A toothed turtle from the Late Jurassic of China and the global biogeographic history of turtles

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          Abstract

          Background

          Turtles (Testudinata) are a successful lineage of vertebrates with about 350 extant species that inhabit all major oceans and landmasses with tropical to temperate climates. The rich fossil record of turtles documents the adaptation of various sub-lineages to a broad range of habitat preferences, but a synthetic biogeographic model is still lacking for the group.

          Results

          We herein describe a new species of fossil turtle from the Late Jurassic of Xinjiang, China, Sichuanchelys palatodentata sp. nov., that is highly unusual by plesiomorphically exhibiting palatal teeth. Phylogenetic analysis places the Late Jurassic Sichuanchelys palatodentata in a clade with the Late Cretaceous Mongolochelys efremovi outside crown group Testudines thereby establishing the prolonged presence of a previously unrecognized clade of turtles in Asia, herein named Sichuanchelyidae. In contrast to previous hypotheses, M. efremovi and Kallokibotion bajazidi are not found within Meiolaniformes, a clade that is here reinterpreted as being restricted to Gondwana.

          Conclusions

          A revision of the global distribution of fossil and recent turtle reveals that the three primary lineages of derived, aquatic turtles, including the crown, Paracryptodira, Pan-Pleurodira, and Pan-Cryptodira can be traced back to the Middle Jurassic of Euramerica, Gondwana, and Asia, respectively, which resulted from the primary break up of Pangaea at that time. The two primary lineages of Pleurodira, Pan-Pelomedusoides and Pan-Chelidae, can similarly be traced back to the Cretaceous of northern and southern Gondwana, respectively, which were separated from one another by a large desert zone during that time. The primary divergence of crown turtles was therefore driven by vicariance to the primary freshwater aquatic habitat of these lineages. The temporally persistent lineages of basal turtles, Helochelydridae, Meiolaniformes, Sichuanchelyidae, can similarly be traced back to the Late Mesozoic of Euramerica, southern Gondwana, and Asia. Given the ambiguous phylogenetic relationships of these three lineages, it is unclear if their diversification was driven by vicariance as well, or if they display a vicariance-like pattern. The clean, primary signal apparent among early turtles is secondarily obliterated throughout the Late Cretaceous to Recent by extensive dispersal of continental turtles and by multiple invasions of marine habitats.

          Electronic supplementary material

          The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0762-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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          Most cited references140

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          Phylogenetic Relationships of Mesozoic Turtles

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            DEVELOPING A PROTOCOL FOR THE CONVERSION OF RANK-BASED TAXON NAMES TO PHYLOGENETICALLY DEFINED CLADE NAMES, AS EXEMPLIFIED BY TURTLES

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              Paleomagnetism of the Atlantic, Tethys and Iapetus Oceans

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                walter.joyce@unifr.ch
                iszkenderun@gmail.com
                jclark@gwu.edu
                xuxing@ivpp.ac.cn
                Journal
                BMC Evol Biol
                BMC Evol. Biol
                BMC Evolutionary Biology
                BioMed Central (London )
                1471-2148
                28 October 2016
                28 October 2016
                2016
                : 16
                : 236
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Chemin de Musée 6, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
                [2 ]Department of Geosciences, University of Tübingen, Hölderlinstrasse 12, 72074 Tübingen, Germany
                [3 ]Department of Geosciences, University of Turin, Via Valperga Caluso 35, 10125 Torino, Italy
                [4 ]Department of Biological Sciences, George Washington University, 800 22nd Street, NW, Suite 6000, Washington, DC 20052 USA
                [5 ]Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origin of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 142 Xizhimenwai Street, Beijing, 100044 China
                Article
                762
                10.1186/s12862-016-0762-5
                5084352
                27793089
                b2e7a7c9-c660-4b52-bd49-dd6baa9aeb30
                © The Author(s). 2016

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 15 March 2016
                : 6 September 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: National Natural Science Foundation of China (CN)
                Award ID: 41120124002
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: Major States Basin Research Projects of China
                Award ID: 2012CB821900
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001, National Science Foundation;
                Award ID: EAR 0922187
                Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DE)
                Award ID: DFG JO 928/2-1
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2016

                Evolutionary Biology
                testudinata,sichuanchelyidae,helochelydridae,meiolaniformes,sichuanchelys palatodentata,jurassic,xinjiang,china,phylogeny,biogeography

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