Andrés Santos-Cubedo

Jaume I University | UJI · Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

We propose that the huge sizes attained by many sauropod dinosaurs can be explained in the context of a climate characterized by pronounced seasonal changes. Under these conditions, the large herbivores would have become migratory, forced to move great distances during the drier times of year, in which case large body size becomes an adaptive advan...

A new somphospondylan titanosauriform from the Lower Cretaceous of Spain is described from the remains found at the Sant Antoni de la Vespa site (upper Barremian Arcillas de Morella Formation) located in Morella. Garumbatitan morellensis gen. et sp. nov. is diagnosed by 11 autapomorphies and eight local autapomorphies; and our phylogenetic analyses...

The Maestrat Basin, in the Iberian System, has proved to be a key point for the study of the hadrosauriform dinosaurs of the Lower Cretaceous period in Europe. The Aliaga, Galve, and Morella sub-basins have all yielded abundant fossils of Mesozoic vertebrates, among which dinosaurs, and especially hadrosauriform styracosternal ornithopods, are the...

A new spinosaurid genus and species is described based on the right maxilla and five caudal vertebrae of a single specimen from the Arcillas de Morella Formation (Early Cretaceous) at the locality of Cinctorres (Castellón, Spain). Protathlitis cinctorrensis gen. et sp. nov. is diagnosed by one autapomorphic feature as well as by a unique combinatio...

The Maestrat Basin, in the Iberian Range, has proved to be a key point for the study of the hadrosauriform dinosaurs of the Lower Cretaceous in Europe. The Aliaga, Galve, and Morella sub-basins have all yielded abundant fossils of Mesozoic vertebrates, among which dinosaurs, and especially hadrosauriform styracosternan ornithopods, are the most abu...

A new styracosternan ornithopod genus and species is described based on the right dentary of a single specimen from the Mirambell Formation (Early Cretaceous, early Barremian) at the locality of Portell, (Castellón, Spain). Portellsaurus sosbaynati gen. et sp. nov. is diagnosed by two autapomorphic features as well as a unique combination of charac...

El Estatuto de autonomía de la Comunidad Valenciana dota a la Generalitat Valenciana de competencia exclusiva sobre la protección del patrimonio y de los espacios naturales de la región. En ambos casos existe legislación que hace referencia a la protección de los fósiles, en este caso las leyes 9/2017, de 7 de abril, de la Generalitat, de modificac...

Mocho P, Escaso F, Gasulla JM, Galobart A, Poza B, Santos-Cubedo A, Sanz JL, Ortega F. 2016. A new titanosauriform sauropod from the Arcillas de Morella Formation (Early Cretaeous), p.97-98. In: Torcida Fernández-Baldor F, Canudo JI, Huerta P, Pereda X (eds.), Abstract book of the VII International Symposium about Dinosaurs Palaeontology and their...

New palynological analysis of the Arcillas de Morella Formation provides data for determinations of age of the Lower Cretaceous strata in the Ermita Sant Antoni de la Vespa section located in the district of Els Ports in the Morella sub-basin of Castellón province, north-eastern Spain. Controversy still exists over the age of this formation, which...

Although discontinuous because of their karst nature, the Almenara-Casablanca complex records a very complete small vertebrate succession (amphibians, squamates, insectivores, bats, rodents and lagomorphs), characterized by the richness of their sites, a richness which cannot be expected in sites of fluvio-lacustrine origin. This late Neogene-early...

A combined investigation by X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Raman spectroscopy and powder X-ray Diffraction (XRD), supplemented with the Rietveld analysis, was conducted on sixty Spanish dinosaur bone specimens from Upper Jurassic/Lower Cretaceous to Upper Cretaceous age to investigate taphonomy and diagen...

The rich microvertebrate record from the Guadix-Baza Basin has enabled the establishment of a detailed biozonation. Additional paleomagnetic and cyclostratigraphic studies have led to an accurate chronostratigraphic background. The earliest Pleistocene include the Kislangia gusii and Mimomys cf. reidi biozones. These levels are characterized by mil...

The uses of toxic substances in the animal kingdom are usually explained as adaptations to reach bigger prey—venom, or to defend from the attack of predators—poison. This is a quite simplistic explanation of the reality, which offers other, less evident, uses for the possession of these compounds. In the present work, we analyze the characters of B...

The very complete small vertebrate succession from the Guadix-Baza Basin enables tracing of the paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic evolution of this basin, in relation with the first human dispersal into Western Europe. This analysis includes data from the amphibian, squamate, insectivore, rodent and lagomorph associations. The several analyzed l...

We examined by Rietveld refinement of X-ray Diffraction patterns a series of 61 human and animal fossil bones in an age range from present time to Middle Triassic (around 245 Ma). This approach, supplemented by elemental analysis according to X-ray Fluorescence, has permitted to obtain a quantitative evaluation of the mineralogical phases in the sp...

Introduction From the upper Jurassic to the lower Cretaceous, two basins (Iberian-levantine and Maestrat) were formed in the South-eastern sector of the Iberian plate. Up to 760 meters of continental and deltaic materials were deposited in them. Independently from the role played by the tectonic forces, which was different in each one of these basi...

Ana is one of the several dinosaur bone sites located in the Arcillas de Morella Formation (Aptian, Lower Cretaceous; eastern Iberian Chain, Spain). This site was discovered in 1998, but it remained unexcavated until 2002, when a palaeontologist team formed by members of the Institut Paleontología Miquel Crusafont from Sabadell and the Grup Guix fr...

A plesiosaur sacral vertebra recovered from the Mas the Rafael site (Todolella, Castellón), belonging to the Arcillas de Morella Formation is described. Details of the regional geology and a synthesis of the Plesiosauria fossil record from the Arcillas de Morella Formation are included. This formation could be important for our understanding of ple...

The eastern Iberian Peninsula area has yielded an extensive dinosaur record since the early XX century. The current taxonomic state of the art summarized in the present paper allows the geographical and time setting of the main taxa of Dinosauria. The taxonomic synthesis discerns diverse thyreophorans (Dacentrurus and Polacanthus) and ornithopods (...

The dinosaurs of Catalonia and Valencia: 20 years of research for spreading' It is one of the projects of diffusion and spreading of the science approved by the Spanish Foundation for the Science and the Technology (FECYT) in 2007. The actions of this project had a principal aim: to bring the paleontology over to the society, showing the results of...

The species Myosorex meini Jammot, 1977 was a nomen nudum because it was named in an unpublished dissertation. The species is here revised using the new material found in the Late Pliocene fissure infillings of Almenara-Casablanca 1 and 4 (province of Castelló, East of Spain) and from the Tollo de Chiclana localities 1B, 3, 10, and 10B in the Guadi...