Variabilidad microestructural de huevos de titanosaurio en el XIX Annual Meeting de la EAVP

La línea oológica también tuvo representación en el pasado congreso de la European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists (EAVP) con el póster titulado “Spherolith variability of megaloolithid and fusioolithid dinosaur eggshells”. En este trabajo se ha comparado la morfología de las unidades estructurales de las cáscaras de varias ooespecies (“especies” de huevos fósiles) atribuidos a saurópodos titanosaurios del Cretácico Superior con las halladas en el yacimiento de Poyos, en la provincia de Guadalajara.

The oofamilies Megaloolithidae and Fusioolithidae have a rich fossil record composed of clutches, eggs and eggshells, most of which come from the Campanian-Maastrichtian of South America, Europe and Asia, and have been attributed to sauropods as their producers. Overall, Megaloolithidae and Fusioolithidae present similar eggshell macro and microstructure features and are mainly differentiated by the degree of fusion of their eggshell units (spheroliths). Many of these ootaxa present a relatively wide range of variability in thickness and/or ornamentation. These features are linked to the height, width, and thus the shape of the spheroliths that form the eggshell. Therefore, the morphological variability of spheroliths of megaloolithid and fusioolithid specimens has been assessed. The length and width, along with the morphology of the accretion lines of each spherolith of each sample, has been registered and analysed to search for differences between ootaxa. The height of the spheroliths between the analysed ootaxa ranges from 0.9 to 2.9mm, whereas the width ranges from 0.1 to 1.1mm. Generally, the range of variability in width is greater than that of spherolith height within each ootaxon, with few exceptions. These results have been compared with dinosaur eggshells from the Poyos fossil site (Upper Cretaceous, Villalba de la Sierra Formation, Guadalajara, Spain). The morphotypes from Poyos have the lowest values for both spherolith height and spherolith width among the analysed ootaxa.

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Más información:

• Referencia: Sanguino, F., de Celis, A., Gascó-Lluna, F., Pérez-García, A., Ortega, F. 2022. Spherolith variability of megaloolithid and fusioolithid dinosaur eggshells. Abstract book of the 19th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists: 178.