Origin, Evolution and Biogeographic history of South American Turtles

DE LA FUENTE MARCELO SAUL; STERLI JULIANA; MANIEL IGNACIO

Springer

Año: 2014 p. 180

978-3-319-00517-1

This volume is partly based on a lecture given in 2011 on the Symposium ?Seaways and landbridges: Southern Hemisphere biogeographic connections through time? held in Argentina, and it is an attempt to show the knowledge of South American turtles, as the result of many years of work on turtle systematic as vertebrate palaeontologists. The aim of this monograph is to present a concise summary on the origin, evolution and biogeografic history of South American continental turtles and tortoises. We hope this monograph will be interesting for students of general Paleontology and Zoology, as well as for herpetologists, and also for general readers interested in South American turtles. As far as possible we have tried to make a balance in the treatment of the extant and the less known extinct South American turtle species. Each chapter deals with different groups of turtles and tortoises and they are ordered accordingly with the timing in the differentiation and integration of each clade in South America. All the South American species mentioned in the text are listed with systematic comments and with either their distribution (for extant species) or with their geographic and stratigraphic procedence data (for extinct forms).