An Unusual New Theropod with a Didactyl from Patagonia Argentina
Publicado por Leonardo Filippi en 9:18
Sebastián
Apesteguía, Nathan D. Smith, Rubén Juárez Valieri, Peter J. Makovicky
Late Cretaceous terrestrial
strata of the Neuquén Basin, northern Patagonia, Argentina have yielded a rich
fauna of dinosaurs and other vertebrates. The diversity of saurischian dinosaurs
is particularly high, especially in the late Cenomanian-early Turonian Huincul
Formation, which has yielded specimens of rebacchisaurid and titanosaurian
sauropods, and abelisaurid and carcharodontosaurid theropods. Continued
sampling is adding to the known vertebrate diversity of this unit.
A new, partially articulated
mid-sized theropod was found in rocks from the Huincul Formation. It exhibits a
unique combination of traits that distinguish it from other known theropods justifying
erection of a new taxon, Gualicho shinyae gen. et sp. nov. Gualicho possesses a
didactyl manus with the third digit reduced to a metacarpal splint reminiscent
of tyrannosaurids, but both phylogenetic and multivariate analyses indicate
that didactyly is convergent in these groups. Derived characters of the
scapula, femur, and fibula supports the new theropod as the sister taxon of the
nearly coeval African theropod Deltadromeus and as a neovenatorid carcharodontosaurian.
A number of these features are independently present in ceratosaurs, and
Gualicho exhibits an unusual mosaic of ceratosaurian and tetanuran
synapomorphies distributed throughout the skeleton.
Apesteguía S, Smith ND,
Juárez Valieri R, Makovicky PJ (2016) An Unusual New Theropod with a Didactyl
Manus from the Upper Cretaceous of Patagonia, Argentina. PLoS ONE 11(7):
e0157793. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0157793
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