First spinosaurid dinosaur from Australia and the cosmopolitanism of Cretaceous dinosaur faunas
First spinosaurid dinosaur from Australia and the cosmopolitanism of Cretaceous dinosaur faunas
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DOI：
10.1098/rsbl.2011.0466
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发表时间：
2011-12-23
期刊：
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Vickers-Rich, Patricia
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barrett, Paul M.;Benson, Roger B. J.;Vickers-Rich, Patricia
维多利亚早白垩纪时期的一根颈椎代表了澳大利亚首只棘龙兽脚亚目恐龙。这一发现极大地扩展了棘龙类的地理范围，表明该分支在泛古大陆分裂开始之前就已接近全球分布。澳大利亚白垩纪脊椎龙、新venatorid、暴龙和dromaeosaurid兽脚亚目恐龙的共同存在，打破了之前关于该地区恐龙动物群主要是地方性的或主要是“冈瓦南”恐龙的观点。许多谱系在劳亚和冈瓦纳都得到了很好的体现，这些观察结果表明，早-“中”白垩纪兽脚亚目分支比以前假设的具有更多的世界性分布，并且当试图在斑纹分布的化石记录的基础上建立古生物地理模式时，需要谨慎。
A cervical vertebra from the Early Cretaceous of Victoria represents the first Australian spinosaurid theropod dinosaur. This discovery significantly extends the geographical range of spinosaurids, suggesting that the clade obtained a near-global distribution before the onset of Pangaean fragmentation. The combined presence of spinosaurid, neovenatorid, tyrannosauroid and dromaeosaurid theropods in the Australian Cretaceous undermines previous suggestions that the dinosaur fauna of this region was either largely endemic or predominantly 'Gondwanan' in composition. Many lineages are well-represented in both Laurasia and Gondwana, and these observations suggest that Early-'middle' Cretaceous theropod clades possessed more cosmopolitan distributions than assumed previously, and that caution is necessary when attempting to establish palaeobiogeographic patterns on the basis of a patchily distributed fossil record.