Late Eocene-early Oligocene snakes from the Transylvanian Basin (Romania)

We report herein the fossil record of snakes recovered from one late Eocene (Priabonian) and two early Oligocene (Rupelian) localities from western Romania. The only late Eocene fossil vertebrate site with snake content is Treznea, which yielded a small sized booid snake assigned to Ungaliophiidae indet. The early Oligocene locality of Cetățuia Hill, Cluj-Napoca, documents an ungaliophiid (cf. ­Messelophis variatus Baszio, 2004), while that of Suceag 1 yielded an ungaliophiid (cf. M. variatus), a member of Alethinophidia incertae sedis (Falseryx cf. neervelpensis) and an indeterminate alethinophidian snake. Part of the identified snakes represent an older fauna, known from the middle Eocene of Germany (i.e., Messelophis Baszio, 2004) and surviving up to the early Oligocene, while the others (e.g. Falseryx Szyndlar & Rage, 2003) may be seen as newcomers that appeared in Europe after the so-called “Grande Coupure”. The low diversity of snake faunas in the studied localities is due to the insular conditions of that territory, with rare intermittent terrestrial connections to the more diverse snake faunas of cratonic Europe.