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| Elaphrosaurinae gen. et sp. indet.
in Poropat, Pentland, Duncan, et al., 2020.
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Highlights
• First evidence of an elaphrosaurine theropod dinosaur ever reported from Australia.
• New elaphrosaurine is geologically the second youngest member of its group known worldwide.
• Elaphrosaurine theropods were capable of tolerating Cretaceous near-polar climates.
Abstract
Elaphrosaurinae is an enigmatic clade of gracile ceratosaurian theropod dinosaurs known from the Late Jurassic of Africa (Elaphrosaurus bambergi) and Asia (e.g., Limusaurus inextricabilis), and the early Late Cretaceous of Argentina (Huinculsaurus montesi). Elaphrosaurinae is often placed within Noasauridae as the sister taxon to Noasaurinae, a clade of small-bodied theropods that lived in South America, Africa, Madagascar and India throughout much of the Cretaceous. Herein, we report the first evidence of Elaphrosaurinae from Australia: a nearly complete middle cervical vertebra from the upper Lower Cretaceous (lower Albian) Eumeralla Formation of Cape Otway, Victoria, Australia. The fact that this site would have been situated at ~76°S towards the end of the Early Cretaceous (~110–107 Ma) implies that elaphrosaurines were capable of tolerating near-polar palaeoenvironments, whereas its age indicates that elaphrosaurines persisted in Australia until at least the late Early Cretaceous. The new Australian elaphrosaurine, in tandem with the recently described Huinculsaurus montesi from the Cenomanian–Turonian of Argentina, implies that the spatiotemporal distribution of Elaphrosaurinae has heretofore been greatly underestimated. Historic confusion of elaphrosaurines with coelurosaurs, especially ornithomimosaurs, coupled with our generally poor understanding of noasaurid evolution, might explain the apparent dearth of fossils of this theropod clade worldwide.
Keywords: Elaphrosaurinae, Theropoda, Gondwana, Australia, Cretaceous
Systematic Palaeontology
Dinosauria Owen, 1842
Theropoda Marsh, 1881
Ceratosauria Marsh, 1884
Noasauridae Bonaparte and Powell, 1980
Elaphrosaurinae Rauhut and Carrano, 2016
Elaphrosaurinae gen. et sp. indet.
Stephen F. Poropat, Adele H. Pentland, Ruairidh J. Duncan, Joseph J. Bevitt, Patricia Vickers-Rich and Thomas H. Rich. 2020. First Elaphrosaurine Theropod Dinosaur (Ceratosauria: Noasauridae) from Australia — A Cervical Vertebra from the Early Cretaceous of Victoria. Gondwana Research. In Press. DOI: 10.1016/j.gr.2020.03.009
Rare long-necked dinosaur that roamed the polar world unearthed in Australia theguardian.com/science/2020/may/18/rare-long-necked-dinosaur-that-roamed-the-polar-world-unearthed-in-australia
