Fingerprinting snakes: paleontological and paleoecological implications of zygantral growth rings in Serpentes

PeerJ
Holger Petermann, Jacques A Gauthier

Abstract

We introduce a new non-destructive source of skeletochronological data with applications to species identification, associating disarticulated remains, assessing minimum number of individuals (MNI), and collection management of fossil snakes, but with potential implications for all bony vertebrates, extinct or extant. Study of a diverse sample of Recent henophidian snakes confirms that annual growth cycles (AGCs) visible on the surface of the vertebral zygantrum correspond to lines of arrested growth in osteohistological thin sections and accordingly reflect chronological age. None of the specimens considered here showed signs of remodelling of the zygantrum, suggesting that a complete, unaltered age record is preserved. We tested potential influences on AGCs with a single experimental organism, a male Bogertophis subocularis, that was raised at a controlled temperature and with constant access to mice and water. The conditions in which this individual was maintained, including that it had yet to live through a full reproductive cycle, enabled us to determine that its AGCs reflect only the annual solar cycle, and neither temperature, nor resource availability, nor energy diversion to gametogenesis could explain that it still ex...Continue Reading

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Citations

Dec 9, 2020·Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·Christopher T GriffinSterling J Nesbitt

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
light microscopy

Software Mentioned

ImageJ
Leica Suite

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