Jean-Claude Rage passed away on 30 March 2018. His unexpected death leaves a great void in the French palaeontological community and in the World palaeoherpetological community, of which he was an esteemed and prominent member. Jean-Claude's life and work have been the topic of recent papers, so that only a brief summary will be given here. During his distinguished career in palaeontology, at the “Centre national de la recherche scientifique” (CNRS), which he joined in 1968, Jean-Claude published several hundred papers, mainly in the field of palaeoherpetology, a topic on which he was an internationally recognized expert. Beyond the description of a large number of new taxa and faunal assemblages of amphibians and squamates, Jean-Claude consistently endeavoured to relate his anatomical and systematic work to larger palaeobiological and especially palaeobiogeographical issues. He was among the first French palaeontologists to interpret the fossil evidence he worked on in terms of continental drift and plate tectonics. This original expertise led Jean-Claude to teach continental palaeobiogeography to generations of students in several French universities and in the “Muséum national d’histoire naturelle” (MNHN, Paris). The collection of the fourteen papers of the present memorial volume tries to reflect Jean-Claude's wide range of scientific interests as well as his great interest for broader questions of vertebrate palaeontology. Jean-Claude even had other interests in natural history, as shown by his drawings of various extant animals. This special issue is the first part of a similar issued dedicated to Jean-Claude Rage, which was published by Elsevier in 2019 (https://www.em-consulte.com/revue/PALEVO/18/7/table-des-matieres/).
The second part of the thematic is available here.
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Contents
Palaeobiology and palaeobiogeography of amphibians and reptiles: An homage to Jean-Claude Rage – Part I
Annelise FOLIE et al.
693-697, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (71)
Early tetrapodomorph biogeography: Controlling for fossil record bias in macroevolutionary analyses
Jacob D. GARDNER et al.
699-709, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (72)
High ecomorphological diversity among Early Cretaceous frogs from a large subtropical wetland of Iberia
Raúl O. GÓMEZ & Andres I. LIRES
711-723, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (73)
A new pipoid frog (Anura, Pipimorpha) from the Paleogene of Patagonia. Paleobiogeographical implications
Alexis M. Aranciaga ROLANDO et al.
725-734, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (74)
The first juvenile specimen of Eolacerta (Squamata: Eolacertidae) from the early–middle Eocene of the Messel Pit (Germany)
Andrej ČERŇANSKÝ & Krister T. SMITH
735-745, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (75)
The taxonomy, chronostratigraphy and paleobiogeography of glyptosaurine lizards (Glyptosaurinae, Anguidae)
A new species of Lapparentophis from the mid-Cretaceous Kem Kem beds, Morocco, with remarks on the distribution of lapparentophiid snakes
A new Late Cretaceous snake from Patagonia: Phylogeny and trends in body size evolution of madtsoiid snakes
Raúl O. GÓMEZ et al.
771-781, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (78)
Adaptation of the vertebral inner structure to an aquatic life in snakes: Pachyophiid peculiarities in comparison to extant and extinct forms
Alexandra HOUSSAYE et al.
783-799, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (79)
Poor but classic: The squamate fauna from the late Miocene of Pikermi, near Athens, Greece
A contribution to the herpetofauna from the late Miocene of Gritsev (Ukraine)
Amphibians and squamate reptiles from the late Pleistocene of the “Caverne Marie-Jeanne” (Hastière-Lavaux, Namur, Belgium): Systematics, paleobiogeography, and paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental reconstructions
Hugues-Alexandre BLAIN et al.
849-875, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (82)
First record of Diplocynodon ratelii Pomel, 1847 from the early Miocene site of Tušimice (Most Basin, Northwest Bohemia, Czech Republic)
Àngel Hernández LUJÁN et al.
877-889, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (83)
Thyreophoran vertebrae from the Callovian (Middle Jurassic) of the Vaches Noires cliffs (Normandy, France), with remarks on the dinosaur assemblage from the Vaches Noires
Eric BUFFETAUT & Jérôme TABOUELLE
891-896, Published on 30 November 2019, art. 18 (84)
Enigmatic teeth from the Jurassic–Cretaceous transition of Morocco: The latest known non-mammaliaform cynodonts (Synapsida, Cynodontia) from Africa?
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