Authors
Enric Torres-Roig, Kieren J Mitchell, Josep Antoni Alcover, Fernando Martínez-Freiría, Salvador Bailón, Holly Heiniger, Matthew Williams, Alan Cooper, Joan Pons, Pere Bover
Publication date
2021/5
Journal
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society
Volume
192
Issue
1
Pages
144-168
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Description
Viperinae is a subfamily of viperid snakes whose fossil record in the Mediterranean islands is, until now, restricted to 12 palaeontological deposits on seven islands. Revision of the material excavated 30 years ago from the Middle/Late Pleistocene–Holocene deposit of Es Pouàs [Eivissa (= Ibiza), Balearic Islands, western Mediterranean] revealed about 6000 bones of a small-sized viper across different stratigraphic levels. Its morphological characteristics are different enough to known species of Vipera to warrant the description of a new species, but the nearly complete mitochondrial genome obtained from this snake based on a sample dated to 16 130 ± 45 bp, suggested it belonged to a new insular population of Lataste’s viper (Vipera latastei), Vipera latastei ebusitana subsp. nov. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that the dispersal of the ancestors of V. l. ebusitana to Eivissa, most probably from a north …
Total citations
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