A new hadrosaurid dentary from the latest Maastrichtian of the Pyrenees (north Spain) and the high diversity of the duck-billed dinosaurs of the Ibero-Armorican Realm at the very end of the Cretaceous

Abstract

In the latest Maastrichtian, the European hadrosauroid fauna was more diverse than those of North America and Asia. The European record of hadrosaurid dentaries is an example of this diversity, and most of the sites with mandibular remains are located in the Ibero-Armorican Realm. Within the Iberian Peninsula, most of the remains are located in the Tremp Basin (South Central Pyrenees). Two of the three valid hadrosaurid taxa defined in this basin are from the Blasi sites (Arén, Huesca province): Arenysaurus ardevoli (Blasi-3) and Blasisaurus canudoi (Blasi-1). A new locality in Blasi (Blasi 3.4) has provided a new dentary from an indeterminate euhadrosaurid. This dentary presents some characters intermediate between Arenysaurus and Blasisaurus, some characters similar to Pararhabdodon isonensis (from the nearby province of Lleida), and some characters of its own. Nevertheless, due to its fragmentary character, without dentition or its edentulous anterior part, it cannot be determined above the level of Euhadrosauria. It thus represents a fourth Iberian euhadrosaurian taxon in the Ibero-Armorican Realm, different from Arenysaurus, Blasisaurus and Pararhabdodon, increasing the diversity of hadrosauroids in this realm at the very end of the Cretaceous.

Keywords::

• Hadrosauridae
• Late Cretaceous
• dentary
• paleobiodiversity
• Iberian Peninsula

Acknowledgements

Financial support was provided by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain (projects CGL2010-16447/BTE, CGL2011-30069-C02-01,02/BTE), the Gobierno de Aragón and the European Social Fund (Grupos Consolidados, Departamento de Educación y Cultura; JIC, PC-C) and the Gobierno del Principado de Asturias (Protocolo CN-04-226; JIR-O). The excavations and restoration of the fossils were subsidised by the Gobierno de Aragón, the Diputación Provincial de Huesca and the Ayuntamiento de Arén. We thank the editor-in-chief Dr Gareth Dyke (Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre and Institute of Life Sciences, University of Southampton, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK), Dr Andrew McDonald (Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on the manuscript. Photographs of Figure 5 were taken by Z. Herrera (University of Zaragoza). Rupert Glasgow revised the English grammar.

Notes

^1. Present address: CONICET-Instituto de Investigación en Paleobiología y Geología, Río Negro, Argentina.

^2. Email: [email protected]

^3. Email: [email protected]

^4. Email: [email protected]

^5. Email: [email protected]

^6. Email: [email protected]