The titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur Mendozasaurus neguyelap is represented by several partial skeletons from a single locality within the Coniacian (lower Upper Cretaceous) Sierra Barrosa Formation in the south of Mendoza Province, northern Neuquén Basin, Argentina. A detailed revision of Mendozasaurus, including previously undocumented remains from the holotype site, allows us to more firmly establish its position within Titanosauria, as well as enabling an emended diagnosis of this taxon. Autapomorphies include: (1) middle and posterior cervical vertebrae with tall and transversely expanded neural spines that are wider than the centra, formed laterally by spinodiapophyseal laminae that are not connected with the pre- or postzygapophyses; (2) anterior caudal vertebrae (excluding anteriormost) with ventrolateral ridge-like expansion of prezygapophyses; and (3) humerus with divided lateral distal condyle on anterior surface. New remains demonstrate that the presacral vertebrae of Mendozasaurus were not unusually short anteroposteriorly, with this compression instead resulting from taphonomic crushing. Comparative studies of articulated pedes of other taxa allow us to interpret that the pedal formula of Mendozasaurus was 2-2-2-2-0, based on disarticulated bones that form a right hind foot. Mendozasaurus was incorporated into an expanded version of a titanosauriform-focussed phylogenetic data matrix, along with several other contemporaneous South American titanosaurs. The resultant data matrix comprises 84 taxa scored for 423 characters, and our phylogenetic analysis recovers Mendozasaurus as the most basal member of a diverse Lognkosauria, including Futalognkosaurus and the gigantic titanosaurs Argentinosaurus, Notocolossus, Patagotitan and Puertasaurus. Lognkosauria forms a clade with Rinconsauria (Muyelensaurus + Rinconsaurus), with Epachthosaurus and Pitekunsaurus recovered at the base of this grouping. A basal lithostrotian position for this South American clade is well supported, contrasting with some analyses that have placed these taxa outside of Lithostrotia or closer to Saltasauridae. The sister clade to this South American group is composed of an array of near-global taxa and supports the hypothesis that most titanosaurian clades were widespread by the Early–middle Cretaceous.
Figure 3. Life restoration of Mendozasaurus neguyelap based on the largest adult individual (femur length: 1530 mm). Artwork by Bernardo Gonzaléz Riga.
CONCLUSIONS
A detailed description of all remains pertaining to the early Late Cretaceous Argentinean titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur Mendozasaurus neguyelap enables a revised diagnosis for the genus. An expanded phylogenetic analysis recovers Mendozasaurus and several other taxa as part of a rich Lognkosauria that is placed within a diverse clade of South American lithostrotian titanosaurs. The sister clade to this South American group is composed of a near-global array of titanosaurs, which supports recent work that has argued for a widespread distribution of most titanosaurian clades by the Early–middle Cretaceous.
Bernardo J. Gonzàlez Riga, Philip D. Mannion, Stephen F. Poropat, Leonardo D. Ortiz David and Juan Pedro Coria. 2018. Osteology of the Late Cretaceous Argentinean Sauropod Dinosaur Mendozasaurus neguyelap: Implications for Basal Titanosaur Relationships. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.zlx103. DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlx103
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رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
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ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
Titanosauria was the most diverse and successful lineage of sauropod dinosaurs. This clade had its major radiation during the middle Early Cretaceous and survived up to the end of that period. Among sauropods, this lineage has the most disparate values of body mass, including the smallest and largest sauropods known. Although recent findings have improved our knowledge on giant titanosaur anatomy, there are still many unknown aspects about their evolution, especially for the most gigantic forms and the evolution of body mass in this clade. Here we describe a new giant titanosaur, which represents the largest species described so far and one of the most complete titanosaurs. Its inclusion in an extended phylogenetic analysis and the optimization of body mass reveals the presence of an endemic clade of giant titanosaurs inhabited Patagonia between the Albian and the Santonian. This clade includes most of the giant species of titanosaurs and represents the major increase in body mass in the history of Titanosauria.
Etymology:Patago from Patagonia (southern South America) and titan (Greek divinity) symbolic of strength and large size. The species name honours the Mayo family for their hospitality during fieldwork at the ‘La Flecha’ ranch.
José L. Carballido, Diego Pol, Alejandro Otero, Ignacio A. Cerda, Leonardo Salgado, Alberto C. Garrido, Jahandar Ramezani, Néstor R. Cúneo and Javier M. Krause. 2017. A New Giant Titanosaur Sheds Light on Body Mass Evolution Among Sauropod Dinosaurs. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284(1860); 20171219. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.1219
Patagotitan mayorum: New study describes the biggest dinosaur ever phy.so/421462792 via @physorg_com
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شاهد قناة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على اليوتيوب لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
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ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
Skeletal and life restorations of the Ruyangosaurus giganteus holotype by Nima Sassani. Osteoderms hypothesized based on Vidal, Ortega, and Sanz (2014). Beige elements are based on undescribed material likely referable to the holotype specimen. Scale bar equals 4m.
For many years the precise taxonomy of Titanosauria has been a puzzle, and even today only certain segments of this vast clade are well-understood. The phylogenetic positions of many titanosaurs are murky, though specimens often still await rigorous analysis. One of the largest examples is the massive Chinese titanosaur Ruyangosaurus giganteus – though largely incomplete, the holotype is distinct enough to indicate strong phylogenetic affinities with a specific subgroup of titanosaurs. A review of previous literature on Ruyangosaurus, referred tentatively to Andesauridae, shows that this classification is based on three weak, non-diagnostic characters. Ruyangosaurus differs from taxa traditionally included in Andesauridae in at least 20 characters of the torso, femur, and tibia. Several plesiomorphies of Ruyangosaurus are extremely rare in titanosauria except for the clade Lognkosauria and its close relatives. The vertebra initially described as a posterior cervical is most likely an anterior dorsal, with a strong resemblance to that of Puertasaurus. The posterior dorsal of Ruyangosaurus shares synapomorphies with Mendozasaurus and Dreadnoughtus. The femur clusters close to the femora of Malawisaurus, Traukutitan, and Pitekunsaurus. Ruyangosaurus is here recovered as a lognkosaurian, with significant implications for the distribution and evolution of that group and the paleobiology of Mid-Cretaceous China.
Fig. 15. Skeletal and life restorations of the Ruyangosaurus giganteus holotype by Nima Sassani. Osteoderms hypothesized based on Vidal, Ortega, and Sanz (2014). Beige elements are based on undescribed material likely referable to the holotype specimen. Scale bar equals 4m.
Ruyangosaurus giganteus represents a new and unusual radiation of Lognkosauria in Asia in the early part of the Late cretaceous period, coinciding with a time of Africa’s final separation from South America and gradual collision with Asia. Its unique morphology implies a close relationship to Puertasaurus, and it is possible it may form a subclade within Lognkosauria with Notocolossus, Pitekunsaurus, and Puertasaurus, with Mendozasaurus, Dreadnoughtus and Futalognkosaurus forming another sub-clade. However, Ruyangosaurus differs from all other lognkosaurs and the rest of titanosauria in having neural fossae separated from the neural canal by laminae, in having a strange quartet of nearly flat “spider laminae” on the posterior neural arch of the posterior dorsal, and in having the intraprezygapophyseal lamina located far higher on the neural arch in the anterior dorsal. As there is a paucity of Ruyangosaurus material,diagnosis of many features is not possible, though it shows a particularly strong affinity with Puertasaurus in anterior dorsal morphology and with Lognkosauria and Lithostrotia in general asit lacks defined hypantra and hyposphenes. Based on the dorsal material, the Ruyangosaurus holotype is a very large sauropod, exceeding Futalognkosaurus and Dreadnoughtus in size.Based on the dimensions of the anterior dorsal, it likely also exceeded Notocolossus, though wasprobably smaller than Puertasaurus and the recently discovered titanosaur species in the MPEF collections still awaiting description. This newly excavated taxon from Argentina’s Chubut province is known from multiple specimens in an excellent state of preservation, which appearstrongly lognkosaurian in morphology, among which the largest femur appears to be roughly 2.6 m in length
Nima Sassani and Gunnar Tyler Bivens. 2017. The Chinese Colossus: An Evaluation of the Phylogeny of Ruyangosaurus giganteus and Its Implications for Titanosaur Evolution. PeerJ Preprints. 5:e2988v1. DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2988v1
Lü J, Xu L, Jia S, Zhang X, Zhang J, Yang L, You H and Ji Q. 2009. A New Gigantic Sauropod Dinosaur from the Cretaceous of Ruyang, Henan, China. Geological Bulletin of China. 28(1); 1-10.
Ruyangosaurus giganteus (Lü et al., 2009) ... Art by Zhao Chuang
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رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
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ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
The paleobiogeographic significance of continental Africa during the middle and Late Cretaceous is not well understood, in part due to incomplete sampling from large portions of the landmass during these intervals. Intensified field efforts in the Galula Formation exposed in southwestern Tanzania have revealed a diverse vertebrate fauna, including the novel titanosaurian Shingopana songwensis, gen. et sp. nov., described herein. Based on a left angular, cervical vertebrae, cervical and dorsal ribs, a left humerus, and a partial left pubis, Shingopana exhibits morphology indicating affinities with the Late Cretaceous aeolosaurine titanosaurians of South America. The bulbous expansion of the cervical vertebral neural spine is similar to the condition in Bonitasaura salgadoi, Overosaurus paradasorum, and Trigonosauruspricei. The dorsal ribs of Shingopana also present proximal anterior and posterior flanges that previously were proposed to be unique to Overosaurus. Furthermore, Shingopana is diagnosed by a divided spinoprezygapophyseal lamina in the middle-to-posterior cervical vertebrae. Parsimony and both uncalibrated and tip-dated Bayesian phylogenetic approaches support Shingopana as the first African titanosaurian that is closely related to aeolosaurines. Comparisons with other African titanosaurians, such as the co-occurring Rukwatitan bisepultus and geographically proximate Malawisaurus dixeyi, suggest that southern African forms represent diverse taxa rather than forming a monophyletic group. Moreover, southern African forms exhibit stronger affinities with South American clades than with representative northern African form, suggesting that tectonically driven separation of the two landmasses may have influenced the development of progressively isolated southern African faunas throughout the Cretaceous.
Excavation of Shingopana songwensis showing ribs and other bones being prepared for plaster-jacketing.
photo: Nancy Stevens
Reconstruction of Shingopana songwensis and the landscape in which it lived, in what is now Tanzania.
Illustration: Mark Witton, www.markwitton.com
SYSTEMATIC PALEONTOLOGY
DINOSAURIA Owen, 1842
SAURISCHIA Seeley, 1887
SAUROPODA Marsh, 1878
TITANOSAURIA Bonaparte and Coria, 1993
LITHOSTROTIA Upchurch, Barrett, and Dodson, 2004
SHINGOPANA SONGWENSIS, gen. et sp. nov.
Etymology—Shingopana, ‘shingo’ is the Kiswahili word for neck and ‘pana’ is the Kiswahili word for wide, in reference to the bulbous expansion of the neural spine exhibited by the wellpreserved cervical vertebra A. The Latinized specific epithet, songwensis, refers to the Songwe area and geologic sub-basin of southwestern Tanzania from which the type specimen was recovered.
....
Wide shot of the southwestern Tanzania locality from which the new dinosaur was excavated.
photo: Eric Roberts
Eric Gorscak, Patrick M. O'Connor, Eric M. Roberts and Nancy J. Stevens. 2017. The Second Titanosaurian (Dinosauria: Sauropoda) from the middle Cretaceous Galula Formation, southwestern Tanzania, with Remarks on African Titanosaurian Diversity. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2017.1343250
Meet the new #dinosaur, Shingopana songwensis, discovered by #NSFfunded scientists working in Tanzania: @NSF
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شاهد قناة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على اليوتيوب لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
تعرف على ترتيب مواضيع منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات (حتى لا تختلط عليك الامور) من هنا
ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
• A new Gondwanan Early Cretaceous (Berriasian – early Hauterivian) dinosaur species is described.
• The specimen comes from the Rio Piranhas Formation, Triunfo Basin - Brazil.
• It is one of the oldest described basal titanosaur ever recorded in Gondwana.
• The discovery reinforces the South American origin for Titanosauria during the early Cretaceous.
Abstract
Although dinosaurian ichnofaunas are common in the Northeastern Brazilian Interior Basins, osteological remains are poorly represented in these areas. One of the main challenges in vertebrate paleontology in the Lower Cretaceous of this region is to recognize body-fossils, which can unveil the anatomy, functional morphology and paleoecological aspects of the dinosaurian fauna recorded until now only by footprints and trackways. The discovery of a new dinosaur specimen in the Rio Piranhas Formation of the Triunfo Basin opens new perspectives into the comprehension of paleogeographical and temporal distribution of the titanosaur sauropods. Titanosaurs are common in Upper Cretaceous rocks of Brazil and Argentina. The age of the Rio Piranhas Formation is considered to range from Berriasian to early Hauterivian. Thus, the description of this new species opens new viewpoints concerning the paleobiogeographical aspects of these sauropod dinosaurs.
Keywords: Triunfo Basin; Titanosauria; Triunfosaurus leonardii gen. et sp. nov
Ismar de Souza Carvalho, Leonardo Salgado, Rafael Matos Lindoso, Hermínio Ismael de Araújo-Júnior, Francisco Cézar Costa Nogueira and José Agnelo Soares. 2017. A New Basal Titanosaur (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil. Journal of South American Earth Sciences. 75; 74–84. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsames.2017.01.010
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شاهد قناة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على اليوتيوب لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
تعرف على ترتيب مواضيع منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات (حتى لا تختلط عليك الامور) من هنا
ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
Volgatitan simbirskiensis, gen. et sp. nov., is described based on a series of anterior and middle caudal vertebrae from a single individual discovered in the Lower Cretaceous (upper Hauterivian, Speetoniceras versicolor ammonite Zone) marine deposits at Slantsevy Rudnik vertebrate locality near Ulyanovsk City, Russia. The new taxon is characterized by strongly procoelous anterior and middle caudal vertebrae, a long centrum of the first caudal vertebra, a strong ventral ridge in the anterior and middle caudal vertebrae, a neural arch positioned at the anterior half of the centrum, hyposphene-hypantrum articulation in the anterior caudal vertebrae, and somphospondylous bone texture. Phylogenetic analysis places the new taxon as a lithostrotian titanosaur, a basal member of the lineage leading to the Lognkosauria. This lineage previously contained only South American taxa with body mass reaching 60–70 tons. Volgatitan gen. nov. is the first European and the geologically oldest representative of this lineage. Its body mass is estimated as 17.3 tons. Discovery of Volgatitan gen. nov. suggests that the lithostrotian lineage leading to the Lognkosauria had a wider distribution in the Early Cretaceous and became extinct everywhere except South America by the end of the Early Cretaceous.
KEYWORDS: Dinosauria, Sauropoda, Titanosauriformes, Titanosauria, Lithostrotia, Early Cretaceous, Eastern Europe, Russia
Volgatitan simbirskiensis anterior caudal vertebra (holotype), in right lateral (A), anterior (B), left lateral (C), posterior (D), dorsal (E), and ventral (F) views.
Alexander Averianov and Vladimir Efimov. 2018. The Oldest Titanosaurian Sauropod of the Northern Hemisphere. Biological Communications. 63(3), 145–162. DOI: 10.21638/spbu03.2018.301
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شاهد قناة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على اليوتيوب لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
تعرف على ترتيب مواضيع منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات (حتى لا تختلط عليك الامور) من هنا
ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
The African terrestrial fossil record has been limited in its contribution to our understanding of both regional and global Cretaceous paleobiogeography, an interval of significant geologic and macroevolutionary change. A common component in Cretaceous African faunas, titanosaurian sauropods diversified into one of the most specious groups of dinosaurs worldwide. Here we describe the new titanosaurian Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia gen. et sp. nov. from the Mtuka Member of the Galula Formation in southwest Tanzania. The new specimen preserves teeth, elements from all regions of the postcranial axial skeleton, parts of both appendicular girdles, and portions of both limbs including a complete metatarsus. Unique traits of M. moyowamkia include the lack of an interpostzygapophyseal lamina in posterior dorsal vertebrae, pronounced posterolateral expansion of middle caudal centra, and an unusually small sternal plate. Phylogenetic analyses consistently place M. moyowamkia as either a close relative to lithostrotian titanosaurians (e.g., parsimony, uncalibrated Bayesian analyses) or as a lithostrotian and sister taxon to Malawisaurus dixeyi from the nearby Aptian? Dinosaur Beds of Malawi (e.g., tip-dating Bayesian analyses). M. moyowamkia shares a few features with M. dixeyi, including semi-spatulate teeth and a median lamina between the neural canal and interpostzygapophyseal lamina in anterior dorsal vertebrae. Both comparative morphology and phylogenetic analyses support Mnyamawamtuka as a distinct and distant relative to Rukwatitan bisepultus and Shingopanasongwensis from the younger Namba Member of the Galula Formation with these results largely congruent with newly constrained ages for the Mtuka Member (Aptian–Cenomanian) and Namba Member (Campanian). Coupled with recent discoveries from the Dahkla Oasis, Egypt (e.g., Mansourasaurus shahinae) and other parts of continental Afro-Arabia, the Tanzania titanosaurians refine perspectives on the development of African terrestrial faunas throughout the Cretaceous—a critical step in understanding non-marine paleobiogeographic patterns of Africa that have remained elusive until the past few years.
Systematic paleontology
DINOSAURIA
SAURISCHIA
SAUROPODA
TITANOSAURIFORMES
TITANOSAURIA
LITHOSTROTIA
MNYAMAWAMTUKA MOYOWAMKIA, gen. et sp. nov.
Etymology: Mnyamawamtuka (Mm-nya-ma-wah-mm-too-ka), ‘mnyama’ is the Kiswahili word for ‘animal’ or ‘beast’ and acts as a conceptual proxy to the titans in Titanosauria, and ‘wa Mtuka' is Kiswahili for ‘of the Mtuka’ in reference to the river drainage that yielded the type specimen. Moyowamkia (Mm-oh-yo-wa-mm-key-ah), ‘moyo’ is the Kiswahili word for heart and ‘wa mkia’ is Kiswahili for ‘of the tail’, in reference to the posterolateral expansion of the posterior centrum on the middle caudal vertebrae that gives the posterior centrum surface a heart-shape outline.
Holotype: RRBP 05834, a partial skeleton including an anterior cervical vertebral neural arch and four cervical vertebral centra, seven partial dorsal vertebrae, a sacral neural arch, three partial sacral centra, three sacral ribs, seven caudal vertebral neural arches and seven centra, four chevrons, numerous dorsal rib fragments, a right scapula, a right sternal plate, a partial left humerus and distal right humerus, partial left ulna, right metacarpal I and left metacarpal III, a partial left ischium, a partial right pubis, partial left and right femora, left tibia and partial right tibia, a left fibula, left metatarsal I, left metatarsal II, right metatarsal III, left metatarsal IV, left metatarsal V, two pedal phalanges, a left ungual, and numerous unidentifiable fragments. The majority of the fossils were prepared at the Ohio University Fossil Preparation Facility, with some of the first-discovered elements prepared by J. P. Cavigelli. Preperation used standard manual and technical techniques including hand tools and pneumatic air scribes. Repository information of RRBP 05834 is the Rukwa Rift Basin Project, Tanzanian Antiquities Unit, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The fossils are, at time of publication, on temporary loan and deposited at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. All of the fossils are accessible by request. Research casts will permanently be housed at Ohio University and in the collections at Denver Museum of Science and Nature.
Fig 1. Map of research area. Map of Africa, A, with expanded regional map of the Rukwa Rift Basin of Tanzania, B, with the type localities of Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia and Rukwatitan bisepultus quarry near the Galula study area, C, and the Shingopana songwensis quarry near the Nsungwe study area, D. Malawi Dinosaur Beds (DB) marked in B to demonstrate the proximity of the deposits to the Galula Formation.
Fig 2. Quarry map of the Mtuka bonebed locality RRBP 2004–06. Recovered elements of Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia are color-coded and separated by dashed lines according to the year they were collected. The quarry map is represented as a four-by-six-meter grid. Unmarked elements on the map are either fragments or unidentified.
Type locality and horizon: The specimen was recovered in the Mtuka Member of the Cretaceous Galula Formation. The Mtuka Member is dominated by coarse sandstone fluvial deposits and abundant overbank siltstone and mudstone lenses within an extensive fluvial braidplain system. The holotype of M. moyowamkia was recovered from a quarry developed along the Mtuka River drainage in southwestern Tanzania (Fig 1). The quarry is roughly 20 kilometers south of Lake Rukwa near the coordinates of 32° 34’ E and 8° 34’ S. The initial discovery was made in 2004 at locality RRBP 2004–06, with additional elements recovered sequentially during the 2005–2008 field seasons by the Rukwa Rift Basin Project field teams (Fig 2). Generally, larger and more complete elements, such as appendicular remains, were recovered in the western part of the quarry whereas smaller and more fragmented elements were recovered from the eastern part of the quarry, indicating short-distance transport (Fig 2). Excavation permits were issued by The United Republic of Tanzania, Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Antiquities Unit, P.O. Box 2280, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to P. M. O’Connor under the specific permit numbers: 14–2004; EA 402/605/01; EA 402/605/01/78; EA 402/605/01/20; and EA 402/604/01/7. In a broader context, the M. moyowamkia discovery and excavation was made in the early years of the Rukwa Rift Basin Project with the aim of addressing the paucity of fossils recovered from the Cretaceous of sub-Saharan Africa.
Age and distribution: The materials were recovered from the Mtuka Member of the Galula Formation of the Red Sandstone Group, Rukwa Rift Basin, southwestern Tanzania. Based on previous lines of evidence, including faunal data within the overlying Namba Member, the age of the Galula Formation was best constrained to the middle Cretaceous (Aptian–Cenomanian) with potential dates of 100–110 Ma. However, new paleomagnetic data place the Mtuka Member (i.e., the specific unit from which M. moyowamkia was recovered) within the Cretaceous long normal with estimates of Aptian–Cenomanian for the unit and a younger date for the overlying Namba Member as either Campanian or Cenomanian–Santonian.
Fig 3. Teeth associated with Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia skeleton. Teeth recovered from the Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia quarry. A–D, tooth Morph A; E–F, tooth Morph B; and G–J, tooth Morph C. A, G, distal; B, E, H, labial; C, I, mesial; D, J, lingual; and F, occlusal views. Abbreviations: labwf, labial wear facet; linwf, lingual wear facet. Scale bar equals 1 cm.
Diagnosis:
...
Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia is diagnosed by the following suite of autapomorphies: (1) middle and posterior dorsal vertebrae with vertical lamina between neural canal and interprezygapophyseal lamina that bifurcates dorsally; (2) posterior dorsal vertebra with no interpostzygapophyseal lamina as the postspinal lamina continues to the dorsal margin of the neural canal; (3) prominent dorsolateral expansion on the posterior centrum of the middle caudal vertebra; (4) curved crest with accompanying fossa within the dorsomedial region of the proximal scapular blade; (5) sternal plate unusually small, estimated to be, at most, 42% of humerus length.
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Eric Gorscak and Patrick M. O’Connor. 2019. A New African Titanosaurian Sauropod Dinosaur from the middle Cretaceous Galula Formation (Mtuka Member), Rukwa Rift Basin, Southwestern Tanzania. PLoS ONE. 14(2): e0211412. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211412
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شاهد قناة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على اليوتيوب لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
رابط مدونة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات في أي وقت حــــتى لو تم حذفها من هنا شاهد صفحة منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بألاف المواضيع والمشاركات على الفيس بوك لمزيد من الشرح من هنا
تعرف على ترتيب مواضيع منتدى مدونات بلوجر جاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات (حتى لا تختلط عليك الامور) من هنا
ملاحظة هامة: كل عمليات تنزيل، رفع، وتعديل المواضيع الجاهزة تتم بطريقة آلية، ونعتذر عن اي موضوع مخالف او مخل بالحياء مرفوع بالمدونات الجاهزة بآلاف المواضيع والمشاركات، ولكم ان تقوموا بحذف هذه المواضيع والمشاركات والطريقة بسيطة وسهلة. ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــسلامـ.
