Vellberg and the origin of major reptile groups

• Applicant: Dr. Gabriela Sobral
• Subject Area: Geology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491131419

Reptiles (including birds) comprise more than half of the living diversity of land vertebrates. They have a long evolutionary history and represent important components of many present-day communities. However, their early evolutionary history is still very inadequately known. This is due, in part, to a poor fossil record and a lack of studies that have focused exclusively on elucidating the origins of major reptile groups. Vellberg in Baden-Württemberg is an important fossiliferous locality that has yielded a wide range of fossil reptiles, many of which represent the earliest members of these major reptile groups. While several new taxa from Vellberg have been described, its reptile diversity is even greater than previously thought, and there is more material to be studied. However, although these fossils offer the potential to bridge knowledge gaps in the early evolutionary history of reptiles, there is currently no appropriate phylogenetic framework to analyse them. Current available studies were not designed to elucidate the origin of these major groups, lacking either enough sampling from early members of these groups or excluding some of them altogether. As a result, the placement of Vellberg fossils in the reptile tree is often very unstable. Without a robust phylogenetic hypothesis, not only the classification of Vellberg fossils remain difficult, but it also hinders us to ask broader macroevolutionary questions on reptile evolution. The objective of this project is thus to use Vellberg fossils to construct a reptile phylogeny that can be used in subsequent evolutionary analyses of reptiles. For this, I will gather morphological data through first-hand observation of specimens and through CT scanning, which will be analyzed with parsimony and Bayesian methods.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants