taxonID	type	description	language	source
FF1AFA1CFFE2BF4CFF55FA5BFBA7992F.taxon	description	The vast majority of fossil remains reported in the literature were recovered from geographical areas where Timon still exists today (Mateo, 2009). FosFARbase lists 34 fossil occurrences referable to Timon, from the Gelasian to the Holocene, and from France, Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar (Böhme & Ilg, 2003). Some additional occurrences are reported by other authors, still from Quaternary localities of France and Spain (e. g. Fernández Eraso et al., 2010; Bañuls Cardona et al., 2012; Benítez de Lugo Enrich et al., 2015). The oldest fossil might be represented by a dentary from the Pliocene of France, which constitutes the holotype of Lacerta ruscinensis Depéret, 1890, but was considered closely related to Timon lepidus by Depéret (1890) himself, Młynarski (1956) and Estes (1983). Estes (1983) even suggested that the specimen might be referred to the extant species, resulting in L. ruscinensis being a junior synonym of T. lepidus. The absence of records from Northern Africa and the Middle East is most probably due to the very scarce knowledge of the palaeoherpetofaunas from those regions. Reports of fossils outside the current distribution are rare, and none of them has been described or properly identified. A possible Timon specimen from the late Pleistocene of Germany (Brunner, 1957) was referred to Lacerta sp. by Estes (1983), and to L. agilis by Mateo (1988). Large-sized, lacertid bones from Gargano (Italy) have been referred to Lacerta sp. by Delfino & Bailon (2000), who also mention similarities with Timon lepidus. Bailon (2004) figured and described a mandible from the Middle Pleistocene of Corsica with affinities to Timon lepidus. Both the occurrences from Gargano and Corsica have been included in a distribution map of the genus Timon by Ahmadzadeh et al. (2016), which indicates additional fossil occurrences in Sicily (Italy) and on Malta. These fossils from Sicily and Malta most probably represent the findings of the extinct ‘ Lacerta ’ siculimelitensis by Böhme & Zammit-Maempel (1982), although this is not explicitly stated. This enigmatic large-sized lacertid was considered to belong to Timon by Mateo (2009), but a detailed reassessment of the species would be needed to confirm this interpretation. In order to improve knowledge of the insular lizards that could be related to Timon, herein we describe and analyse the relationships of fossil material from the Calabrian to Upper Pleistocene fissure fillings of Monte Tuttavista (Orosei, Sardinia, Italy), which was initially referred to Lacerta sp. on the basis of large size (Abbazzi et al., 2004), but whose morphology was not described in detail. INSTITUTIONAL ABBREVIATIONS The material from Monte Tuttavista was initially numbered using ‘ MT’ as abbreviation for the locality, ‘ VIa’ for specimens from the site ‘ Cava VI-antica’, ‘ IX’ for the site ‘ Cava IX- Prolagus ’ and ‘ BS’ for the site ‘ Cava VIII-Blocco Strada’. This resulted in specimen numbers such as ‘ MT-IX- 054 ’. All these specimens are deposited in the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Sassari e Nuoro, Nuoro, Italy. Other institutional abbreviations used herein are the following: CIPA, Osteoteca, LaboratorioArqueociencias, Lisbon, Portugal; COMGR, Collezione Osteologica Mauro Grano, Roma, Italy; HUJ-OST, Osteological Collections, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; MDHC, Massimo Delfino Herpetological Collection in the Museum of Geology and Paleontology of the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Turin, Italy; MNCN, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain; MNHN, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France; MRAC, Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium; NHMUK, Natural History Museum, London, UK; NHMW, Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna, Austria; PIMUZ, Paläontologisches Institut und Museum der Universität Zürich, Switzerland; SRK, Sammlung Ralf Kosma, Staatliches Naturhistorisches Museum Braunschweig, Germany; UAM, Universitad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain; ZZSiD, Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, Poland.	en	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): 825-856, DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zly003, URL: https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/184/3/825/4953635
FF1AFA1CFFF8BF56FEC8FBE0FD499A19.taxon	description	The herein reported fossils represent the first occurrence of Timon in Sardinia, which is outside the current geographical range of the genus, and lies in between the eastern and western areas inhabited by the three distinct species-groups of Timon (Ahmadzadeh et al., 2016). However, this is perhaps not so surprising given that, according to distribution models based on current environmental factors, all four western species of Timon would be adapted to inhabit Sardinia (Ahmadzadeh et al., 2016). The occurrence of Timon in the Pleistocene of Sardinia thus further corroborates a wider distribution of the genus in the recent past, as proposed by Ahmadzadeh et al., (2016). POTENTIAL CAUSES FOR LOCAL EXTINCTION	en	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): 825-856, DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zly003, URL: https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/184/3/825/4953635
FF1AFA1CFFF8BF56FEC8FBE0FD499A19.taxon	description	Whereas an influence of humans on the local extinction of Timon and agamids appears unlikely, several carnivore mammals first occur on Sardinia during the ‘ Dragonara’ subcomplex. These include three members of Lutrinae, and the small-sized canid Cynotherium sardous (Abbazzi et al., 2005; Palombo, 2006, 2009; Palombo & Rozzi, 2014). The lutrines are specialized to prey on aquatic animals (Willemsen, 1992), and can thus probably be excluded as predators of the large lizards. However, the appearance of the endemic canid Cynotherium sardous is of particular interest with respect to the extinction of Timon and possibly also the vipers and agamids. Cynotherium sardous likely evolved from larger canids that first arrived on the island during the Early Pleistocene (just before or during the main faunal turnover: Abbazzi et al., 2005; Lyras & van der Geer, 2006; Lyras, van der Geer & Rook, 2010; Palombo & Rozzi, 2014). Throughout the Pleistocene, these earlier forms became progressively smaller and adapted to prey on small-sized animals like the small lagomorph Prolagus (Lyras & van der Geer, 2006; Lyras et al., 2010), and thus possibly also large-sized lizards such as Timon, whereas smaller lizards remained safe from predation by this newly evolved predator (see below). Larger canids, as well as hyaenids, are reported from the early Pleistocene of Sardinia (Rook et al., 2004; Abbazzi et al., 2005; Lyras & van der Geer, 2006), but these were most likely less adapted to feed on smaller prey like Prolagus, large lizards and snakes, and became extinct during the faunal turnover (Rook et al., 2004; Palombo, 2006, 2009; Palombo & Rozzi, 2014). The body size decrease in Cynotherium, and thus the evolution of C. sardous, can also be traced among the sites at Monte Tuttavista (Abbazzi et al., 2005). Whereas elements attributable to the genus are found nearly throughout all stratigraphic layers, only bones from the two stratigraphically highest sites, ‘ VI-Banco 6 ’ and ‘ VII- 2 ’, can be tentatively (C. cf. sardous at VI-Banco 6; Abbazzi et al., 2005) and definitively referred to the small-sized C. sardous (VII- 2; Abbazzi et al., 2005). This size decrease apparently correlates, in particular, with the disappearance of Timon and agamids: VI-Banco 6 produced six remains attributable to Timon, and VII- 2 none (see Fig. 1 and Supplementary Material), and the last occurrence of agamids is from ‘ XI-canide’, which is just below the two sites hosting C. sardous. Indeterminate snakes and the small-sized, possible Podarcis continued to thrive throughout the ‘ Dragonara’ subcomplex, and were among the most frequent finds in VI-Banco 6 (Abbazzi et al., 2004). Around the Pleistocene – Holocene boundary, Vulpes vulpes also arrived on Sardinia (Palombo, 2006), which has been shown to prey on lizards and snakes (Díaz-Ruiz et al., 2013). The Pleistocene was a time of marked climatic oscillations between warmer and colder periods. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds to a cold period (the Younger Dryas; Miraldo et al., 2013), which seems to have had an important impact on the fauna in Corsica (Vigne, 2014) and on the distribution of Timon lepidus on the Iberian Peninsula (Miraldo et al., 2013). However, current Timon populations inhabit variable climatic zones around the Mediterranean, and some species seem to have speciated quite fast to adapt to new environmental conditions and ecological niches (Ahmadzadeh et al., 2016). Therefore, it seems most plausible that the cause for extinction of large lizards on Sardinia was a combination of the evolution or introduction of new predators preying on small-sized animals (in particular Cynotherium sardous) and climatic changes.	en	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): 825-856, DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zly003, URL: https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/184/3/825/4953635
