Alain Phélizon's scientific contributions

Publications (11)

Article
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Saniwa is an extinct genus of varanid squamate from the Eocene of North America and Europe. Up to now, only one poorly known species, Saniwa orsmaelensis Dollo, 1923, has been reported from Europe. Diagnostic material was limited to vertebrae with only preliminary description and no figure provided, except of one dorsal vertebra that was designated...
Article
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Here we describe the lizard fauna from the locality of Montchenot (Paris Basin, late Paleocene, MP6). This material can be allocated to five major clades: Scincoidea, Lacertoidea (?Lacertidae), Amphisbaenia, Anguimorpha (?Anguidae and Shinisauridae). The assemblage from Monchenot is dominated by small lizard specimens and appears as highly sorted....
Conference Paper
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The Paris Basin has delivered important faunas of fossil mammals from the Thanetian. A rich sample of Late Paleocene mammals has recently been collected from the Marnes de Montchenot in the Montagne de Reims (Marne, France). Study of the new fauna and comparisons with collections from other localities (Cernay, Berru) result in the identification of...
Article
We present new species of an enigmatic family of mammals, which is endemic to Europe, the Paroxyclaenidae: Merialus bruneti sp. nov., Fratrodon tresvauxi gen. et sp. nov., Paraspaniella gunnelli gen. et sp. nov., and Sororodon tresvauxae gen. et sp. nov. The fossils described come from six localities of the Ypresian of the Paris Basin (France): Pou...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Saniwa is an extinct genus of varanid lizard from the Eocene of North America and Europe. It is the sister taxon to the crown-group Varanus. Up to now, only one poorly known species is recognized from Europe, Saniwa orsmaelensis from the earliest Eocene of Dormaal, Belgium. This species originally named by Louis Dollo nearly a century ago, is the e...
Article
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Plesiadapid mammals (Eutheria, Euarchonta, Plesiadapiformes) are well represented in the late Paleocene to early Eocene of Europe (reference levels MP6, MP7 and MP8+9), but relationships among the described species and their links to North American plesiadapids remain disputed. To better understand the evolution of the group in Europe, to explore i...
Article
Full-text available
A diversified fauna of fossil mammals is described from the Thanetian Marnes de Montchenot near Reims (France, Paris Basin). The new fauna is composed mainly of micromammals, which are represented by isolated teeth and a few more complete dental remains. Multituberculates, insectivore-like mammals and louisinine “condylarths” are particularly commo...

Citations

... The fossil record of Varanidae, although still very incomplete, demonstrates a great diversity across most of the Cenozoic and a wide geographic distribution, encompassing broad areas that are currently well outside the range of extant forms, such as North America and Europe Molnar, 2004), including a form with anatomical and physiological adaptations unique among tetrapods: the re-evolution of a fourth eye from the pineal organ (Smith et al., 2018). In fact, the varanid fossil record is far richer in Europe than on any other continent, spanning from the earliest Eocene up to the Middle Pleistocene (Augé, 2005;Augé et al., 2022;Fejérváry, 1918Fejérváry, , 1935Georgalis et al., 2017Hoffstetter, 1969;Villa et al., 2018). The richness of the European fossil record is likely due to intensive sampling effort, reflecting a long history of palaeontological discoveries, with the first European varanid fossils recovered and described already during the 1860s (Gaudry, 1862(Gaudry, -1867; see details in Georgalis, 2019). ...
... However, Hyaenodictis lived only during a short period in Europe: the genus disappeared from Europe at the end of the Ypresian. Solé et al. (2019) noted that a turnover (named Ypresian-Lutetian Mammal Turnover) seems to have occurred at the end of the Ypresian. However, this turnover must be deeply investigated in the future in order to characterize the European ecosystem dynamics through the Paleogene. ...
... P. cookei (UM 87990 "C," "F," and "G"), P. tricuspidens (MNHN R 613 and Pellouin CM 104 from the Pellouin collection), and the Le Quesnoy plesiadapid ("A," "B," "C," and "D"). The Le Quesnoy plesiadapid refers to a new, largely undescribed species of Plesiadapis (originally referred to as the Creil Platycheorops; Godinot et al. 1998;Jehle et al. 2019) from the Le Quesnoy locality of the Paris Basin (Godinot et al., in prep.). Paromomyidae is represented by Ignacius clarkforkensis (UM 108210). ...
... M. Barbatodon oardaensis, right p4 UBB Ng2-01, Negoiu (site RM2), Rusca Montană Basin (from Codrea et al., 2017a). N. Barbatodon transylvanicus, left Jehle et al., 2012), or else multituberculates disappeared altogether with the advent of the more derived, modern placental orders (e.g., Smith et al., 2014), following an important dispersal-related faunal turnover near the Paleocene-Eocene boundary (e.g., Hooker and Collinson, 2012;De Bast and Smith, 2017). ...