Anniealexandria is an extinct genus of amphisbaenian lizard known by the type species Anniealexandria gansi from the earliest Eocene of Wyoming. Anniealexandria is the only known member of the family Bipedidae in the fossil record, which otherwise only includes the extant genus Bipes from Mexico.[1] It was named in 2009 in honor of Annie Montague Alexander, founder of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Remains of Anniealexandria are known only from a single fossil locality in the Bighorn Basin called Castle Gardens, but within the locality its fossils are common in the Willwood Formation, usually consisting of isolated jaw bones and vertebrae. Anniealexandria seems to have been a common component of a paleofauna that included fifteen other lizard species and existed in western North America during a period of global warming in the latest Paleocene and earliest Eocene.[2]
Below is a cladogram from Longrich et al. (2015) showing the phylogenetic relationships of Anniealexandria:[1]
Amphisbaenia
Rhineuridae
†Chthonophidae
Chthonophis subterraneus
†Oligodontosaurus spp.
Amphisbaeniformes
Blanidae
†Anniealexandria gansi
Bipes spp.
Cadea blanoides
†Todrasaurus gheerbrandti
Afrobaenia
Trogonophis wiegmanni
Diplometopon zarudnyi
Agamodon anguliceps
Amphisbaenidae
^ abLongrich, N. R.; Vinther, J.; Pyron, R. A.; Pisani, D.; Gauthier, J. A. (2015). "Biogeography of worm lizards (Amphisbaenia) driven by end-Cretaceous mass extinction". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 282 (1806): 20143034. doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.3034. PMC 4426617. PMID 25833855.
^Smith, Krister T. (2009). "A new lizard assemblage from the earliest eocene (Zone Wa0) of the bighorn basin, wyoming, USA: Biogeography during the warmest interval of the cenozoic". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 7 (3): 299–358. Bibcode:2009JSPal...7..299S. doi:10.1017/S1477201909002752. S2CID 86158362.
Anniealexandria is an extinct genus of amphisbaenian lizard known by the type species Anniealexandria gansi from the earliest Eocene of Wyoming. Anniealexandria...
California and the southern coast of Mexico and the extinct genus Anniealexandria represented by one species that lived in what is now Wyoming during...
retirement in 1938. Acrodus alexandre Alticamelus alexandre a miocene camel Anniealexandria Aplodontia alexandrae named by Eustace Furlong Bouvardia alexanderae...
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