Blanca Moncunill-SoléUniversity of A Coruña | UDC · Department of Physics and Earth Sciences
Blanca Moncunill-Solé
PhD in Biodiversity by the University Autonomous of Barcelona
About
58
Publications
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Introduction
Biologist & Paleobiologist | Posdoc Researcher at @cienciasUDC @UnivRoma3 | Proj: Discovering the #paleobiology of #Lagomorphs | ORCID: 0000-0001-8042-4257
Additional affiliations
October 2018 - April 2021
October 2016 - October 2018
September 2016 - October 2018
Publications
Publications (58)
The island rule entails a modification of the body size of insular mammals, a character related with numerous biological and ecological variables. From the Miocene to human colonization (Holocene), Mediterranean and Canary Islands were unaltered natural ecosystems, with paleofaunas formed with endemic giant rodents among other mammals. Our aim is t...
Lagomorphs are widespread around the world, but little is known about the biology and ecology of their fossil ancestors. In this case, knowing the body mass of these extinct species is of principal interest because it is correlated with physio-logical, morphological and life history attributes. Moreover, insular fossil rabbits, hares and pikas, whi...
Body size is a useful character to unravel the biology of fossil taxa and, indirectly, the palaeoenvironment in which they lived. However, the reliability of size proxies is debated, particularly among insular endemics in which large teeth relative to body size have been observed. To shed light on this issue, here we compute statistical models to a...
The study of past pathologies by means of quantitative reports is an underexplored approach to deal with the biology and ecology of extinct taxa. In the present study, we assessed the prevalence rate of primary osteoarthritis in a large sample of Prolagus sardus (Mammalia, Lagomorpha) from Medusa Cave (also known as Grotta Dragonara, Sardinia, Ital...
Fossils provide an excellent opportunity to study and understand the evolution of insular environments free of human-made perturbations. Here, we evaluated the life-history traits and strategy of the extinct insular giant Prolagus sardus (Mammalia: Lagomorpha) by examining microscopically its fossilized bone tissues (osteohistology, skeletochronolo...
The postcranial skeleton is usually considered to be too conservative among all the eusuchian
taxa. However, we have found striking morphological differences when comparing some
appendicular bones (ilium and calcaneum) of Allodaposuchus precedens and A. palustris,
between both taxa as well as with living crocodylians. Such morphological differences...
Here we present the results of a study of the small mammal assemblage recovered from a now disappeared karstic fissure located in a quarry called ‘Pedrera del Corral d’en Bruach’. The site was located at 330 m a.s.l. in the Garraf Massif, ca. 20 km south of Barcelona. An archaeological rescue excavation was conducted in 2006 by the Grup de Recerca...
Paludotona, an insular lagomorph genus endemic of the Tusco-Sardinia palaeobioprovince (~8.3-6.7 Ma), is the last representative of the heterogeneous basal group of early lagomorphs. It postdates the last appearance datum of stem lagomorphs to 6.7 Ma, i.e., by 2.5 my with respect to the previous datum. This makes Paludotona, during the Late Miocene...
The 1-m-tall dwarf elephant Palaeoloxodon falconeri from the Pleistocene of Sicily (Italy) is an extreme example of insular dwarfism and epitomizes the Island Rule. Based on scaling of life-history (LH) traits with body mass, P. falconeri is widely considered to be ‘r-selected’ by truncation of the growth period, associated with an early onset of r...
Pliocene occurrences of Prolagus Pomel, 1853 in central Europe represent anomalies out of the peri-Mediterranean area, at that time the core distribution of the genus. Though known for several decades, those materials never underwent a general revision. The detailed analysis and comparison of all available materials performed here revealed two phen...
Fossil biotas provide an opportunity to explore eco-evolutionary adaptations to insular regimes not subjected to the anthropogenic perturbations. Historically, these studies have been biased towards large-sized taxa, and less efforts has been devoted to small ones. For this reason, the present study reviews the general and specific biological respo...
Climate change strongly affects the range of ochotonids (Order Lagomorpha), fragmenting their habitats and restricting them to ecological islands. The present paper discusses the adaptations of extinct ochotonids to insular stressors, providing baseline data for the management and conservation of extant species. For this purpose, the body mass (BM)...
During recent years, knowledge about crocodyliform diversity of the uppermost Cretaceous from Europe has been substantially improved. Palaeontological efforts have also been focused on microvertebrate diversity and its palaeoecological implications. Isolated crocodylomorph teeth are, by far, one of the most frequently recovered elements in microver...
The fossil insular biotas are composed by exceptional giants and dwarves. However, relatively little is known about their biological traits (body mass, life history or locomotion), especially in small mammals. In the Late Miocene – (?Early Pliocene), the extant Gargano peninsula (Italy) was part of a paleoarchipelago in the Abruzzi-Apulian paleobio...
Harpa major Röding, 1798 is distributed over an extensive area of the Indo-Pacific, between the East African coast and the Marquesas
Islands. The peculiar characteristics of some of its populations (Hawaii, French Polynesia or Tuamotu, among others) are clearly different from the typical form described by Röding of the East Indies, presenting, in g...
Fossil lagomorphs are very useful palaeogeographical indicators. In the last 15 years, several papers centered on fossil lagomorphs contributed to improve the Italian late Miocene–Quaternary palaeogeographical setting, solving palaeobiogeographical enigmas debated for decades, and providing new, challenging palaeogeographic data. The high number of...
Few pathological cases have been identified in fossils of small mammals. Here we report the most ancient paleopathological evidence identified in a lagomorph (Ochotonidae, middle Miocene). The tibiofibular bone was macro- and microscopically (uCT) inspected to provide a diagnosis, an etiology, and its possible relationship with the individual’s cau...
The lower Maastrichtian site of Basturs Poble (southern Pyrenees, Spain) is the first hadrosaur bonebed reported from Europe. It is an accumulation of disarticulated lambeosaurine skeletal elements, possibly belonging to Pararhabdodon isonensis. The sample shows high intraspecific morphological variability among many skeletal elements, suggesting t...
Supporting information about bone histology.
(PDF)
Straight and nearly vertical coronoid process in juvenile lambeosaurines.
(A) Juvenile skull of Lambeosaurus lambei (TMP 83.31.02). (B) Dentary of a very young hadrosaurid (TMP 67.20.232). Scale bar equals 10 cm.
(TIF)
Measurements of BP dentaries, tibiae and femora.
(PDF)
Terre Rosse deposits (upper Miocene; Gargano, Italy) have provided fossil remains of an insular fauna among which the genus Mikrotia (Rodentia) stands out. Several paleobiological studies have already been conducted on this genus, but its body mass has not yet been calculated accurately. The aim of the present work is to reconstruct Mikrotia magna'...
Observing pathologies in the fossil record is unusual, but it may be most helpful to the gain of insights into the biology of extinct species. Up to date, some paleopathologies have been described in large vertebrates (dinosaurs, rhinoceros, deer, horses, carnivores, primates, among others) including, inter alia, fractures, infections or tumors. Ho...
The extreme rareness of Sardinian fossil sites older than Middle and Late Pleistocene makes the Monte Tuttavista karst complex (E Sardinia, Italy) very important. Remarkable lagomorph material, recovered from several fissure infillings of Monte Tuttavista referable to the Capo Figari/Orosei 1 and Orosei 2 faunal sub-complexes (early Pleistocene, ~2...
For downloading the complete PhD Thesis: contact with me (blanca.moncunill@icp.cat) or go to the University website /http://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/392729).
Body size (or its proxy: body mass) has a central position in the colossal web of interdependent biological variables of an organism. It shows correlation with lots of physiological, morpholo...
The evolution of organismal body size in extant and extinct ecosystems of islands (Island Rule) is receiving much attention at present. Allometric models are a reliable way to predict the weight of extinct species, but are scarce or even absent for some groups of micromammals. To fill the gap, we carried out regression models with extant species of...
Free access: http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/6905
Prolagus figaro and P. sardus are part of an endemic insular anagenetic lineage that populated Sardinia since the earliest Late Pliocene to Holocene. BM of some populations of these two species was calculated using regression models. The best BM proxies for Prolagus are: femur le...
Insular gigantism is frequent in fossil and extant micromammals. It is widely assumed to result from increased food availability through expanded dietary niches under decreased interspecific competition. We compared the bone histology of the fossil giant dormouse Hypnomys onycensis (Gliridae) from the Balearic Islands with that of its closest livin...
Article for free - http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Sbet5otAlXHz0
Research on the biology, especially on life history, of insular endemics is of great importance because they are under specific ecological pressures: low extrinsic mortality and resource limitation. We reconstruct some biological traits of an extinct ochotonid, Prolagus apricenicus fro...
Bone histology is a powerful tool to explore the growth patterns of vertebrates. There is a broad consensus that a deeper understanding of bone development in living taxa is still lacking. Here, we aim to explore the ontogeny of the fibrolamellar (FLC) zonal bone of mammals by studying histological sections of the femoral growth series of 84 wild r...
Enamel incremental markings are widely used to reconstruct growth patterns of extinct mammals. However, the likely existence of an allometric relationship between dental morphology and enamel growth suggests that caution is required when making life-history inferences based on these microstructures. In the present study, we aimed to explore the pot...
Growth rate is a fitness component that is determined by intrinsic (e.g. metabolism) and extrinsic (environment) factors, the relative importance of which remains to be ascertained. Vascular and cellular networks of primary compact bone tissue correlate with bone growth rate in vertebrates. Here, we aim to determine the main factor, either intrinsi...
New remains of Hypolagus balearicus Quintana, Bover, Alcover, Agustí & Bailon, 2010 from Ses Fontanelles (Eivissa) gives new information concerning this Early Pliocene endemic leporid from Eivissa and Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Western Mediterranean sea). The body mass estimated for H. balearicus ranges from 1.3 to 2.7 kg, which is small in compar...
Le genre Hypnomys Bate, 1918 inclut certaines chrono-espèces néogènes endémiques de Majorque et Minorque, qui ont évolué dans des conditions insulaires, depuis le Pliocène inférieur jusqu’à l’arrivée de l’Homme sur l’archipel. L’étude des proportions allométriques (longueur fonctionnelle et diamètre sagittal) des os longs d’Hypnomys eliomyoides Agu...
On island, small mammals become giants, while large ones become dwarfs. This tendency of insular mammals to converge in body size is coined the island rule. The different ecological pressures that govern island ecosystems (low predation and limited resources) do not only trigger changes in body size but also in the species' life history. Up to now,...
In mammals that grow up more slowly and live longer, replacement teeth tend to appear earlier in sequence than in fast growing mammals. This trend, known as 'Schultz's Rule', is a useful tool for inferring life histories of fossil taxa. Deviations from this rule, however, suggest that in addition to the pace of life history, ecological factors may...
In mammals that grow up more slowly and live longer, replacement teeth tend to appear earlier in sequence than in fast growing mammals. This trend, known as 'Schultz's Rule', is a useful tool for inferring life histories of fossil taxa. Deviations from this rule, however, suggest that in addition to the pace of life history, ecological factors may...