Search results for "Dinosauria"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism
2010
The herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were the largest terrestrial animals ever, surpassing the largest herbivorous mammals by an order of magnitude in body mass. Several evolutionary lineages among Sauropoda produced giants with body masses in excess of 50 metric tonnes by conservative estimates. With body mass increase driven by the selective advantages of large body size, animal lineages will increase in body size until they reach the limit determined by the interplay of bauplan, biology, and resource availability. There is no evidence, however, that resource availability and global physicochemical parameters were different enough in the Mesozoic to ha…
Sistemática, filogenia y paleobiología de Iguanodon galvensis (Ornithopoda, Dinosauria) del Barremiense inferior (Cretácico Inferior) de Teruel (Espa…
2017
En 1825, Gideon A. Mantell bautizó con el nombre de Iguanodon al animal al cual pertenecían unos dientes fósiles hallados en sudoeste de Inglaterra. Iguanodon fue el segundo género de dinosaurio en ser definido y a lo largo de la historia múltiples especies se han incluido dentro de este género de ornitópodo. No obstante, actualmente las únicas especies válidas de este icónico dinosaurio europeo del Cretácico Temprano son la especie tipo Iguanodon bernissartensis (Barremiense tardío-Aptiense) e Iguanodon galvensis (Barremiense temprano). Así, en esta Tesis Doctoral se estudian los fósiles de la segunda de las especies, I. galvensis, hallados en los depósitos del Barremiense inferior (Cretác…
New skulls of the basal sauropodomorph Plateosaurus trossingensis from Frick, Switzerland: is there more than one species?
2021
The Triassic basal sauropodomorph Plateosaurus trossingensis is well-known from mass accumulations at the German localities of Trossingen and Halberstadt and the Swiss locality of Frick, and is significant especially regarding its ta-phonomy and proposed developmental plasticity. These implications, however, rely on the assumption that this material derives from a single species, which has been questioned. Here we describe new skull material from Frick including eight complete and six partial skulls, more than doubling the number of known skulls of P. trossingensis. This exceptional sample size allows for gaining a deeper understanding of variability that may occur in a single species. The …