2 Interdisciplinary Paleontology: New approaches to solving complex paleontological problems (Part I)

Paleontology is increasingly drawing upon insight from other disciplines to solve complex problems and generate more accurate reconstructions of past life. This session will illustrate novel interdisciplinary research and provide tools to develop such approaches.

Monday, 18 May 2026
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alvarado F

Great Basin Fossil Lizards: Implications for Holocene Environmental Change

Paper number: 2-4
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:20 AM – 9:40 AM

Authors

Abstract

The Holocene Epoch represents an interval of climatic and environmental variability in the  Great Basin, marked by a transition from cooler, wetter conditions to warmer, increasingly arid climates. These shifts resulted in changes to vegetation communities and habitat structure before and during human settlement. Critically, understanding how this marginal environment and its biota responded to Holocene climate variability provides an important baseline for evaluating ongoing and future environmental change in arid systems. Within this region, squamate reptiles (lizards) are highly sensitive to environmental conditions because of their ectothermic physiology and ecological niche fidelity, making them effective indicators of past environmental change. Despite this sensitivity, and their abundance on the landscape, lizards remain relatively understudied in Quaternary paleoecological research compared to other vertebrate groups, which creates a gap in our understanding of how small-bodied ectotherms responded to Holocene climate variability in arid and western landscapes. Here we (1) build a paleozoological baseline of lizard species occurrence in the eastern Great Basin, and (2) compare this baseline with modern species occurrence records to begin to evaluate how recent climate change is impacting ecosystem structure. Fossil lizard specimens analyzed in this study (excluding snakes) were recovered from surface collections of chambers in four caves located in Utah’s House Range, between 6400-6800 ft elevation. A total of 67 lizard cranial specimens were analyzed; 35 of which were identified to genus and 32 to species. After accounting for differences in sampling intensity using refraction curves, we then compared differences in taxa presence/absence, relative abundance, and richness between fossil lizard species records and modern species records generated from georeferenced samples from VertNet of lizard specimens collected within the same range. Relative abundance patterns differ between cave and modern assemblages; for example Uta stansburiana is much more abundant in the modern compared to the fossil assemblage (76% vs 16% of records). One species, Aspidoscelis tigris, is documented in modern museum records but is absent from the fossil assemblage. By integrating fossil cave assemblages with modern comparative records, our research highlights the value of small reptiles as a proxy for reconstructing past environments.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 58, No. 4

doi: 10.1130/abs/2026RM-410572

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