A new desert-dwelling dinosaur (Theropoda, Noasaurinae) from the Cretaceous of south Brazil
| Autor: | Gabriel S. Ferreira, Julio Cesar de Almeida Marsola, Lucas Cesar Frediani Sant’ana, Edison Fortes, Paulo César Manzig, Rosangela Honório da Silva Lorençato, Neurides de Oliveira Martins, Max C. Langer, Rosana Lima, Luciano da Silva Vidal, Martín D. Ezcurra |
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| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
lcsh:Medicine phylogeny Theropoda Article Dinosaurs purl.org/becyt/ford/1 [https] purl.org/becyt/ford/1.5 [https] 03 medical and health sciences Paleontology 0302 clinical medicine Tetrapod (structure) Animals lcsh:Science Dinosauria Phylogeny Multidisciplinary Geography biology Fossils Herpetology Palaeontology Skull lcsh:R Geology biology.organism_classification Biological Evolution Bauru Group Cretaceous Gondwana 030104 developmental biology Taxon Noasaurus Velocisaurus lcsh:Q Desert Climate Brazil 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | Scientific Reports, Vol 9, Iss 1, Pp 1-31 (2019) Scientific Reports CONICET Digital (CONICET) Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas instacron:CONICET |
| ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-019-45306-9 |
| Popis: | Noasaurines form an enigmatic group of small-bodied predatory theropod dinosaurs known from the Late Cretaceous of Gondwana. They are relatively rare, with notable records in Argentina and Madagascar, and possible remains reported for Brazil, India, and continental Africa. In south-central Brazil, the deposits of the Bauru Basin have yielded a rich tetrapod fauna, which is concentrated in the Bauru Group. The mainly aeolian deposits of the Caiuá Group, on the contrary, bear a scarce fossil record composed only of lizards, turtles, and pterosaurs. Here, we describe the first dinosaur of the Caiuá Group, which also represents the best-preserved theropod of the entire Bauru Basin known to date. The recovered skeletal parts (vertebrae, girdles, limbs, and scarce cranial elements) show that the new taxon was just over 1 m long, with a unique anatomy among theropods. The shafts of its metatarsals II and IV are very lateromedially compressed, as are the blade-like ungual phalanges of the respective digits. This implies that the new taxon could have been functionally monodactyl, with a main central weight-bearing digit, flanked by neighbouring elements positioned very close to digit III or even held free of the ground. Such anatomical adaptation is formerly unrecorded among archosaurs, but has been previously inferred from footprints of the same stratigraphic unit that yielded the new dinosaur. A phylogenetic analysis nests the new taxon within the Noasaurinae clade, which is unresolved because of the multiple alternative positions that Noasaurus leali can acquire in the optimal trees. The exclusion of the latter form results in positioning the new dinosaur as the sister-taxon of the Argentinean Velocisaurus unicus. Fil: Langer, Max Cardoso. Universidade de Sao Paulo; Brasil Fil: de Oliveira Martins, Neurides. Museu de Paleontologia de Cruzeiro do Oeste; Brasil Fil: Manzig, Paulo César. Museu de Paleontologia de Cruzeiro do Oeste; Brasil Fil: de Souza Ferreira, Gabriel. Universidade de Sao Paulo; Brasil Fil: de Almeida Marsola, Júlio César. Universidade de Sao Paulo; Brasil Fil: Fortes, Edison. UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE MARINGÁ (UEM); Fil: Lima, Rosana. UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE MARINGÁ (UEM); Fil: Frediani Sant'ana, Lucas Cesar. UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE MARINGÁ (UEM); Fil: da Silva Vidal, Luciano. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; Brasil Fil: da Silva Lorençato, Rosangela Honório. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; Brasil Fil: Ezcurra, Martin Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; Argentina |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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