Timon undetermined

Tschopp, Emanuel, Villa, Andrea, Camaiti, Marco, Ferro, Letizia, Tuveri, Caterinella, Rook, Lorenzo, Arca, Marisa & Delfino, Massimo, 2018, The first fossils of Timon (Squamata: Lacertinae) from Sardinia (Italy) and potential causes for its local extinction in the Pleistocene, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 184 (3), pp. 825-856 : 850

IS TIMON SP. FROM SARDINIA AMBLYODONT?

A tendency to enlarged, blunt and molariform teeth has been reported several times in fossil and extant lizards, many of them inhabiting islands. It is very slightly developed in the already mentioned lacertid ‘ Lacerta ’ siculimelitensis from Malta and Sicily ( Böhme & Zammit-Maempel, 1982; Holman, 1998). Enlarged, but still pointed, teeth occur in the amphisbaenid Amphisbaena ridleyi from Fernando de Noronha in the North Atlantic ( Pregill, 1984), whereas strongly enlarged, blunt teeth have been reported in teiids from the Lesser Antilles ( Pregill, 1984), iguanids from Cuba ( Estes & Williams, 1984), the lacertid Maioricalacerta from Mallorca ( Bailon et al., 2014) and the anguid Diploglossus from Guadeloupe ( Bochaton et al., 2016). Some of the enlarged teeth in the maxillae and dentaries attributed to Timon sp. herein resemble much the condition of the teeth in Diploglossus from Guadeloupe. Often, such a morphology has been described as amblyodonty, referring to Hoffstetter (1944) as defining source for the term. Hoffstetter (1944: p. 549) introduced the term to describe ‘dents arrondies’, rounded teeth. More recently, Čerňanský, Augé & Rage (2015: p. 1) described amblyodonty as ‘blunt and enlarged’ teeth, which seems to be the current general understanding of the term. However, enlarged and blunt teeth are not necessarily rounded, so that it remains unclear to us if amblyodonty means different morphologies to different researchers. Because of this, and because most of the enlarged, rounded teeth in our specimens are worn or damaged, we herein refrain of stating that Timon sp. from Sardinia was amblyodont, even though similarities to species often considered to be amblyodont are apparent.