Artículo
Bizarre tail weaponry in a transitional ankylosaur from subantarctic Chile
Soto Acuña, Sergio; Vargas, Alexander O.; Kaluza, Jonatan Ezequiel
; Leppe, Marcelo A.; Botelho, Joao F.; Palma Liberona, José; Gutstein, Carolina Simon; Fernández, Roy A.; Ortiz, Héctor; Milla, Verónica; Aravena, Bárbara; Manríquez, Leslie M. E.; Alarcón Muñoz, Jhonatan; Pino, Juan Pablo; Trevisan, Cristine; Mansilla, Héctor Sebastian; Hinojosa, Luis Felipe; Muñoz Walther, Vicente; Rubilar Rogers, David
Fecha de publicación:
12/2021
Editorial:
Nature Publishing Group
Revista:
Nature
ISSN:
0028-0836
e-ISSN:
1476-4687
Idioma:
Inglés
Tipo de recurso:
Artículo publicado
Clasificación temática:
Resumen
Armoured dinosaurs are well known for their evolution of specialized tail weapons— paired tail spikes in stegosaurs and heavy tail clubs in advanced ankylosaurs1 . Armoured dinosaurs from southern Gondwana are rare and enigmatic, but probably include the earliest branches of Ankylosauria2–4 . Here we describe a mostly complete, semi-articulated skeleton of a small (approximately 2 m) armoured dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period of Magallanes in southernmost Chile, a region that is biogeographically related to West Antarctica5 . Stegouros elengassen gen. et sp. nov. evolved a large tail weapon unlike any dinosaur: a fat, frond-like structure formed by seven pairs of laterally projecting osteoderms encasing the distal half of the tail. Stegouros shows ankylosaurian cranial characters, but a largely ancestral postcranial skeleton, with some stegosaur-like characters. Phylogenetic analyses placed Stegouros in Ankylosauria; specifcally, it is related to Kunbarrasaurus from Australia6 and Antarctopelta from Antarctica7 , forming a clade of Gondwanan ankylosaurs that split earliest from all other ankylosaurs. The large osteoderms and specialized tail vertebrae in Antarctopelta suggest that it had a tail weapon similar to Stegouros. We propose a new clade, the Parankylosauria, to include the frst ancestor of Stegouros— but not Ankylosaurus—and all descendants of that ancestor.
Palabras clave:
PALEONTOLOGIA
,
ANKILOSAURIO
,
CRETACICO
,
GONDWANA
Archivos asociados
Licencia
Identificadores
Colecciones
Articulos(SEDE CENTRAL)
Articulos de SEDE CENTRAL
Articulos de SEDE CENTRAL
Citación
Soto Acuña, Sergio; Vargas, Alexander O.; Kaluza, Jonatan Ezequiel; Leppe, Marcelo A.; Botelho, Joao F.; et al.; Bizarre tail weaponry in a transitional ankylosaur from subantarctic Chile; Nature Publishing Group; Nature; 600; 7888; 12-2021; 259-263
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