Abstract
Abstract. Several British specimens of relatively complete and partial
shells of small pleurosternid turtles, found in the Purbeck Limestone Group
(Berriasian, Lower Cretaceous), are analysed in detail here. Despite having
been found more than a century ago, most of them remained unpublished until
now. Due to the scarce knowledge available to date about the small
individuals of Pleurosternidae from the British record, their taxonomic
status was doubtful. Thus, some authors proposed their attribution to a new
but not defined taxon of small size, whereas others suggested that they
could represent juvenile individuals of Pleurosternon bullockii, the adults of which were also
found in the Purbeck Limestone Group but at different levels. Knowledge
about the shell of the adult individuals of Pleurosternon bullockii has notably increased recently,
abundant information on its intraspecific variability being currently
available. In this context, a detailed study of the small specimens through
qualitative and quantitative approaches is performed here. The results
are evidence a significant range of shape variability because of ontogenetic
development, as well as other types of intraspecific variation such as
inter-individual variation. As a consequence, their attribution to juvenile
individuals of Pleurosternon bullockii is justified, providing new data on the ontogenetic
development of a basal form.
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