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Bone histology of Azendohsaurus laaroussii: Implications for the evolution of thermometabolism in Archosauromorpha

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2019

Jorge Cubo  and
Nour-Eddine Jalil
Jorge Cubo
Affiliation:
Sorbonne Université, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, CNRS, Centre de Recherche en Paléontologie–Paris (CR2P), 4 place Jussieu, BC 104, 75005 Paris, France. E-mail: [email protected]
Nour-Eddine Jalil
Affiliation:
Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Centre de Recherche en Paléontologie–Paris (CR2P), 75005 Paris, France; and Laboratory of Biodiversity and Dynamic of Ecosystems, Department of Geology, Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, University Cadi Ayyad, Marrakesh, Morocco. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper is aimed at constraining the phylogenetic frame of the acquisition of endothermy by Archosauromorpha. We analyzed the bone histology of Azendohsaurus laaroussii. Stylopodial and zeugopodial bones show three tissue types: (1) avascular lamellar zonal bone formed at low growth rates; (2) a scaffold of parallel-fibered bone containing either small primary osteons or simple vascular canals; and (3) fibrolamellar bone formed at high growth rates. We used quantitative histology to infer the thermometabolic regime of this taxon. We define endothermy as the presence of any mechanism of nonshivering thermogenesis that increases both body temperature and resting metabolic rate. Thus, estimating the resting metabolic rate of an extinct organism may be a good proxy to infer its thermometabolic regime (endothermy vs. ectothermy). High resting metabolic rates have been shown to be primitive for the clade Prolacerta–Archosauriformes. Therefore, we inferred the resting metabolic rates of A. laaroussii, a sister group of this clade, and of 14 extinct related taxa, using phylogenetic eigenvector maps. All the inferences obtained are included in the range of variation of resting metabolic rates measured in mammals and birds, so we can reasonably assume that all these taxa (including Azendohsaurus) were endotherms. A parsimony optimization of the presence of endothermy on a phylogenetic tree of tetrapods shows that this derived character state was acquired by the last common ancestor of the clade Azendohsaurus–Archosauriformes and that there is a reversion in Crocodylia.

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Articles
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Paleobiology , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , May 2019 , pp. 317 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society. All rights reserved 2019 

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Footnotes

Data available from the Dryad Digital Repository: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qc86g11

References

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