Paleontologists have added one other species to the Cretaceous-period dinosaur fauna of Europe, and this one was present in Normandy, France.
An abelisaurid tooth related to the holotype specimen of Caletodraco cottardi. Picture credit score: Buffetaut et al., doi: 10.3390/fossils2030009.
Caletodraco cottardi lived in what’s now France durign the Cenomanian age of the Early Cretaceous epoch, some 100 million years in the past.
The traditional species was a member of Furileusauria, a subgroup of derived abelisaurid dinosaurs (medium- to large-sized bipedal predators that had been predominant within the carnivorous fauna in the course of the Late Cretaceous of the traditional southern supercontinent Gondwana) beforehand identified solely from South America.
“When the household Abelisauridae was erected in 1985, it included the only species Abelisaurus comahuensis, a big carnivorous dinosaur from the Campanian of Patagonia,” stated Dr. Eric Buffetaut from PSL Analysis College and his colleagues.
“It has since turn out to be obvious that the Abelisauridae really represent a serious radiation of neoceratosaurian theropods that performed an vital half within the Cretaceous continental ecosystems of South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Madagascar.”
“Though the Abelisauridae have a primarily Gondwanan distribution, an abelisaurid was reported from the Late Cretaceous of southern France as early as 1988, and they’re now identified from Cretaceous localities in a number of European nations, together with France, Spain, Hungary and the Netherlands.”
Two blocks containing the fossilized bones and tooth of Caletodraco cottardi had been unearthed the paleotnologist Nicolas Cottard on the foot of the ocean cliffs at Saint-Jouin-Bruneval on the coast of the Pays de Caux, within the division of Seine-Maritime, Normandy, north-western France.
“The glauconitic chalk of the Pays de Caux is a marine deposit, as indicated within the current case by a shark tooth current within the matrix, near one of many bones within the anterior block,” the paleontologists stated.
“The closest land space — the place the dinosaur described under in all probability lived — will need to have been the Armorican Massif, about 100 km to the south-west.”
“The dinosaur specimen should one way or the other have been carried out to sea, probably by a stream, after which it will need to have floated over a reasonably lengthy distance till it sank to the underside.”
“Occurrences of dinosaur stays in marine deposits are moderately frequent, though this appears to be the primary report from the Late Cretaceous Chalk of the Pays de Caux, the place the one comparatively frequent vertebrate fossils are fish tooth.”
The presence of the furileusaurian abelisaurid Caletodraco cottardi within the Cenomanian of Normandy means that the historical past of the Abelisauridae in Europe was extra complicated than previosuly thought.
“The invention of Caletodraco cottardi reveals that dinosaur stays, though exceedingly uncommon, do happen within the Chalk of the Anglo-Paris basin and {that a} cautious seek for fossil vertebrates in these marine formations can yield shocking and vital outcomes,” the researchers stated.
“The brand new species results in a reassessment of the fossil report of abelisaurids in Europe, exhibiting that, opposite to what may beforehand be assumed, majungasaurines weren’t the one abelisaurid subgroup current in that geographical space, since Caletodraco cottardi apparently belongs to the Furileusauria, a extremely derived clade of Abelisauridae.”
“Caletodraco cottardi is likely one of the earliest identified Furileusauria and its prevalence in Europe results in rethink the biogeographical historical past of this group of theropods, hitherto identified from South America.”
A paper on the findings was printed on-line within the journal Fossil Research.
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Eric Buffetaut et al. 2024. Caletodraco cottardi: A New Furileusaurian Abelisaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Cenomanian Chalk of Normandy (North-Western France). Foss. Stud 2 (3): 177-195; doi: 10.3390/fossils2030009
