Search

EgeUn###, The fauna of amphibians and reptiles (except turtles) from the early Miocene localities of the Kilcak section (Turkey) is described here. The herpetofaunal assemblage of the Kilcak localities is the best documented early Miocene herpetofauna in Anatolia. The following taxa are revealed: Salamandra sp., Latonia sp., Eopelobates sp., Crocodylia indet., Lacertidae indet. (morphotypes A and B), Ophisaurus sp., Anguinae indet., Eoanilius cf. oligocenicus, Bavarioboa sp., Falseryx sp., and Texasophis sp. Among them, Latonia represents the oldest published record of this frog in Anatolia. Its maxilla is sculptured, extending the occurrence of the Latonia lineage with ornamented maxillae to the earliest Miocene, and demonstrating the long coexistence of the Latonia lineages (with smooth and ornamented maxillae), for almost the entirety of the Late Cenozoic. The genera Eopelobates, Eoanilius, and Falseryx are described from Anatolia and Asia for the first time. The booid fauna, being poorly known from this time interval (i.e., the so called "Dark Period" of booid snakes), significantly adds to our knowledge of early Miocene snake assemblages. The snake material from Kilcak indicates a transition from "ancient" late Oligocene to "modern" early-middle Miocene fauna. The widely distributed European taxa recovered in Kilcak, indicate that Anatolia had close faunal links to Europe during the late Oligocene - early Miocene., Russian Foundation for Basic ResearchRussian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) [19-04-00514, AAAA-A19-119020590095-9]; Ege UniversityEge University [TTM /001/2016, TTM/002/2016]; international bilateral research of TUBITAK-RFBRTurkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu (TUBITAK) [111Y192]; University of Torino [SYNTHESYS ES-TAF-5910, SYNTHESYS AT-TAF-5911, SYNTHESYS HU-TAF-6145]; National Scholarship Program of the Slovak Republic (SAIA), Roman Rakitov (Borissiak Paleontological Institute RAS, Moscow, Russia) is thanked for assistance with SEM microscopy. Alexey Tesakov (Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and Andrej Eeroansky (Comenius University in Bratislava) are thanked for fruitful comments. Lars van den Hoek Ostende (Naturalis Biodiversity Center) is thanked for providing literature. This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under No. 19-04-00514, and the government theme under No. AAAA-A19-119020590095-9 (EVS). Authors also were supported by Ege University (TTM /001/2016) and (TTM/002/2016) research grants as well as the international bilateral research of TUBITAK-RFBR 111Y192 during his visits in Russia. GLG acknowledges travel support from the University of Torino, SYNTHESYS ES-TAF-5910 (MNCN, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain), SYNTHESYS AT-TAF-5911 (NHMW, Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna, Austria), and SYNTHESYS HU-TAF-6145 (HNHM, Hungarian Museum of Natural History, Budapest, Hungary) and funding from the National Scholarship Program of the Slovak Republic (SAIA)-the curators of MNCN, NHMW, and HNHM (Marta Calvo Revuelta, Heinz Grillitsch and Silke Schweiger, and Judit Voros, respectively) are highly acknowledged. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and corrections.