Herpetological paleodiversity: General considerations about the Italian fossil record of modern species

The number of species that inhabit Italy at present was compared with the number of those potentially identifiable on the basis of their skeleton as well as with the number of those that have been so far identified in the fossil record. Although 85 herpetological species inhabit political Italy at present (excluding the non nesting or introduced ones), from an osteological‐paleontological point of view only 54 taxa are identifiable (64% of the living ones), 35 of which (42% of 85; 67% of 54) have been identified so far. Thus, the present knowledge of the Italian herpetofauna osteology causes a theoretical loss of paleobiodiversity of nearly one third, whereas the real loss is of nearly 60% of the number of modern taxa and of about 33% of the number of those that are potentially identifiable. Therefore, a major bottleneck affecting the contribution that paleoherpetology can offer to the evolutionary history of the modern herpetofauna is related to the poor knowledge of the skeletal anatomy of several modern taxa.