Morfología de las vértebras caudales de los titanosaurios de Lo Hueco en el XIX Annual Meeting de la EAVP

Como hemos comentado en entradas previas, durante el pasado mes de julio estuvimos en la XIX Annual Conference of the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists celebrada en Benevento (Italia), donde se presentó una comunicación oral sobre la anatomía de las vértebras caudales de dinosaurios titanosaurios del yacimiento de Lo Hueco en Cuenca (Formación Villalba de la Sierra). Esta comunicación titulada "Lo Hueco quarry (Upper Cretaceous, Cuenca, Central Spain), a puzzle of articulated titanosaurian tails", tiene como objetivo describir y comparar las morfologías de las series caudales encontradas en Lo Hueco, definir los posibles morfótipos representados en el yacimiento, así como comparar com el registro del cretácico europeo.

Titanosaurian record from the Upper Cretaceous of Europe is abundant. This record is mainly represented by bones recovered from localities in which the degree of skeletal articulation or association is low, being difficult to establish the relationship between bones and where more than one titanosaur may be represented. Recently, partially articulated titanosaurian specimens have been found in the Ibero-Armorican domain, highlighting the fossil-site of Lo Hueco (Cuenca, Spain). Lo Hueco is a multitaxic bonebed with more than 10,000 collected fossils of which nearly half are titanosaurian remains. These specimens are key to understand the evolutionary history of European titanosaurs and to study their intraspecific variability and paleobiology, using a set of new methodologies. More than 10 individuals with fully to partially articulated or associated elements were found in this fossil-site, including several partial individuals preserving series of articulated caudal vertebrae. Analyses on these specimens are particularly important to understand positional, intra-, and interspecific morphological variability of caudal vertebrae, which can shed light to the systematics of European titanosaurs. Caudal vertebrae are source of several morphological characters in datasets, and particularly diagnostic for titanosaurian subclades. Accessing positional variability can be relevant in the way we codify and score these morphological characters. To test this assumption, we provide a discussion on several caudal vertebrae anatomical characters such as the orientation of the neural spine, the ventral and longitudinal hollow of the centrum, the posterior condyle morphology, or the presence of postzygodiapophyseal lamina.

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