@yohanpochatcot.bsky.social gave an oral presentation on the Miocene herpetofauna from Ukraine 🐢🐍🦎🇺🇦

Huge thanks to NCN for funding, and to my coauthors
@sergilopeztorres.bsky.social and others for their help ! The paper (soon in OpenAccess) is available here : onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author...

We describe shell fragments, and a skull that we attribute to Trionyx cf. vindobonensis. This is interesting both for the paleobiogeography of the family during the Miocene, and also because it opens up the possibility of a northern dispersal of such taxa during this period.

These findings come from new vertebrate localities from the Holy Cross Mountains region, Central Poland. They represent a coastal environment along the Parathethys, about 12 Ma (Serravalian).

A big thanks to all my co-authors, as well as the editor and reviewers, and all the curators that made this work possible !
Feel free to DM me if you want the PDF :)

The phylogenetic signal, although existing, is quite moderate, and sadly cannot be 'translated' into relevant morphological characters. This study will be useful and raises several problems for the inclusion of fossil forms, to study ecological changes for example.

Through a very thorough sampling of extant crocs (111 specimens of diverse ontogenetic stages and taxa) we show that the morphology of the endosseous labyrinth is mainly related to the size of the specimen (allometry) and probably to changes in braincase conformation.