Iguanodon de Morella en Bruselas

Del 9 al 14 de Febrero se desarrollará en el Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences de Bruselas un encuentro extraordinario de la European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists (EAVP) bajo el título: “Tribute to Charles Darwin and Bernissart Iguanodons. New perspectives on Vertebrate Evolution and Early Cretaceous Ecosystems”
El programa y los resúmenes están aquí,  pero para quién pueda estar interesado, extraemos la participación del registro del ornitopodo Iguanodon de Cretácico Inferior de Morella (Castellón).
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Iguanodon Bernissartensis from the Early Aptian of Morella (Castellón, Spain)

José Miguel GASULLA, José Luís SANZ, Francisco ORTEGA y Fernando ESCASO. 2009. Programme, Abstracts and Field Trips Guidebook. European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists Extraordinary Meeting: Tribute to Charles Darwin and Bernissart Iguanodons: New perspectives on Vertebrate Evolution and Early Cretaceous Ecosystems. Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, February 9-14, 2009.

Iguanodon is the most abundant dinosaur represented in the Lower Cretaceous outcrops of Morella (Castellon, Spain). The first discoveries in the area are closely linked to the history of 

Spanish dinosaurology. In fact, the presence of Iguanodon in Morellan deposits is part of the first written reference about dinosaurs in Spain in the late nineteenth century (Vilanova, 1872, 1873). The available material is generally assigned to I. bernissartensis from since the first monograph on Spanish dinosaurs (Sanz et al, 1982). At present, the Iguanodon remains has increased significantly due to material from the "Cantera del Mas de la Parreta", a quarry for the exploitation of clay in which they have identified several fossil-sites (Gasulla, 2005).

One of these fossil sites, the denominated CMP-5, had yielded a partial and disarticulated Iguanodon skeleton composed by more than 130 cranial and postcranial elements and fragments. The CMP-5 place is located in the lower part of the deep red clay package belonging to the "Arcillas de Morella" Formation. This Formation is mainly constituted by terrigenous sediments that it is located at the beginning of an Early Aptian depositional sequence, being part of the large mesozoic sedimentary basin of "El Maestrazgo". The locality corresponds to a small channel included in a muddy deltaic plain. The Iguanodon remains were found in a concentration deposit of hardly 15 m2. The fossils are placed without a preferential orientation in a horizontal plane and with its long axis parallel to the plane of sedimentation. The elements are not in anatomical 

connection and show a low dispersion. The most complete skeletal parts correspond to the cervical, dorsal, sacral and antero-caudal regions of the axial skeleton, as well as pectoral and pelvic girdles. Other remains are some mandibular elements and several anterior autopodial remains, being the most significants the dental pieces and the ungual phalanx of the digit I (pollex).

It has been analyzed the phylogenetic position of the individual using the data matrix proposed by Norman (2002) The three maximum parsimony trees obtained show that the Iguanodon of CMP-5 is the sister taxon of I. bernissartensis. In the revised version of the taxonomic analysis of Iguanodon proposed by Paul (2008), the checked characters in the CMP-5 specimen also coincide with the condition attributed to I. bernissartensis. We therefore propose to assign the CMP-5 individual to I. bernissartensis, confirming the distribution of this taxon in the Lower Cretaceous of the Iberian Peninsula.

Key words: Iguanodon, early Aptian, Morella (Spain)

• GASULLA, J. M. 2005. Los dinosaurios de Morella (Castellón, España): historia de su investigación. Revista Española de Paleontología n.e. X: 29-38.
  
• NORMAN, D.B. 2002. On Asian ornithopods (Dinosauria: Ornithischia). 4. Probactrosaurus Rozhdestvensky, 1966. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 136: 113-144.
  
• PAUL, G.S. 2008. A revised taxonomy of the iguanodont dinosaur genera and species. Cretaceous Research, 29: 192-216.
  
• SANZ, J.L.; CASANOVAS, Mª. L., Y SANTAFE, J. Vte. 1982. Paleontología. In: Santafé, J.V., Casanovas, M.L., Sanz, J.L. y Calzada, S.: Geología y Paleontología (Dinosaurios) de las Capas rojas de Morella (Castellón, España). Diputación Provincial de Castellón y Diputación de Barcelona: 69-169.
  
• VILANOVA, J. 1872. Compendio de Geología. Madrid. 588 pp.
  
• VILANOVA, J. 1873. Act. Soc. Esp. Hist. Nat., 2: 8.

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Las imágenes corresponden a una representación del Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences 

a principios de siglo XX y una reconstrucción del Iguanodon expuesta actualmente en el Museo "Temps de Dinosaures" de Morella