A review of the Late Miocene herpetofauna of the Keinar locality of Moldova

Abstract

Small fossil amphibians and reptiles from the Late Miocene of the Keinar locality of Moldova are reviewed for the first time. The following taxa are described: Mioproteus caucasicus, Chelotriton sp., Latonia sp., Pelobates sp., Pelophylax sp., “Colubrinae” indet., Natrix sp., two Vipera spp. (“Vipera aspis complex” and “Oriental vipers complex”), and Squamata indet. Among them, Pelobates sp. exhibits the characters which occur in the Early–Late Miocene (presence of both pit-and-ridge and pustular sculptures of the frontoparietal bone) and in the Pliocene (short frontoparietal–squamosal contact) members of the genus; this combination is not observed in any other Pelobates species. The viperid snake of the “Vipera aspis complex” is recorded from Moldova for the first time.