Jeremías R. A. Taborda

• Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra (CICTERRA) CONICET-UNC

The Chañares Formation (Ischigualasto‐Villa Unión Basin) is worldwide known by its exquisitely preserved fossil record of latest Middle‐to‐early Late Triassic tetrapods, including erpetosuchids, “rauisuchians,” proterochampsids, gracilisuchids, dinosauromorphs, pterosauromorphs, kannemeyeriiform dicynodonts, and traversodontid, chiniquodontid and p...

Aetosaurs are an archosaur group with a worldwide distribution during the Late Triassic. They were quadrupedal amniotes, had small heads relative to their body size, and had a long tail. Characterized by a dorsal and ventral carapace formed by ornamented and articulated osteoderms, aetosaur feeding ecology is poorly understood. Although aetosaurs a...

South American titanosaurians have been central to the study of the evolution of Cretaceous sauropod dinosaurs. Despite their remarkable diversity, the fragmentary condition of several taxa and the scarcity of records outside Patagonia and southwestern Brazil have hindered the study of continental-scale paleobiogeographic relationships. We describe...

The paleoneuroanatomy of pseudosuchian archosaurs is poorly known, based on direct examination of the internal morphology of braincases and a few artificial endocasts. Among aetosaurs, only one endocast has been described almost a century ago by Case (1921) corresponding to Desmatosuchus spurensis from the Chinle Formation (Norian) of Texas, US, ba...

‘Alert’ or ‘neutral’ orientation of the skull of Neoaetosauroides engaeus based on the digital reconstruction of PVL 5698 and PVL 4363 skulls overlapped Black line and dotted line, horizontal plane; green line, main axis of the lateral semicircular canal; yellow line, snout orientation. The angles between the ventral surface of the braincase and pa...

3D pdf of the skull of Neoaetosauroides engaeus based on the specimens PVL 4363 and PVL 5698 Fossil skull in brown, encephalon in blue, inner ear in orange, cranial nerves in yellow, and middle ear sinus system in green.

The reproduction of titanosaur dinosaurs is still a complex and debated topic. Their Late Cretaceous nesting sites are distributed worldwide and their eggs display substantial morphological variations according to the parent species. In contrast to the typical 1.3-2.0 mm thick shells common to eggs of most titanosaur species (e.g., those that neste...

Finite element models. Nastran files for each egg model analized.

The endocranial morphology of Secernosaurus koerneri (= Kritosaurus australis junior synonym), a hadrosaurid from the Upper Cretaceous of Argentina, was studied using latex and digital endocasts based on three fragmentary braincases. This new information allowed describing and comparing the neuroanatomy of this South American representative of the...

The endocranial morphology of Secernosaurus koerneri (Brett-Surman, 1979; = Kritosaurus australis, Bonaparte, Franchi, Powell and Sepulveda, 1984) from Los Alamitos Formation (Late Campanian-early Maastrichtian), was studied using CT-scans of three fragmentary braincases (MACN-RN 02, 142 and 144). With this information we obtained a hypothetical br...

The Triassic period documents the origin and diversification of modern amniote lineages and the Late Triassic fossil record of South America has been crucial to shed light on these early evolutionary histories. However, the faunistic changes that led to the establishment of Late Triassic ecosystems are largely ignored because of the global scarcity...

Cretaceous titanosaur nesting sites are currently known only from Europe, Asia and South America. In the latter, only the Auca Mahuevo and Sanagasta nesting sites have been confidently assigned to this clade of sauropod dinosaurs. Here we report the discovery of the first eggs and egg clutches found at Tama, a new Upper Cretaceous fossiliferous loc...

Aetosaurs are a group of quadrupedal, armoured pseudosuchian archosaurs from the Upper Triassic. They are characterized by dorsal and ventral carapaces, and appendicular osteoderms, all of them ornamented. Aetosaurs have been proposed as index fossils largely based on the distinctiveness of some osteoderms. Therefore, it is important to understand...

Defecation in communal latrines is a common behaviour of extant mammals widely distributed among megaherbivores. This behaviour has key social functions with important biological and ecological implications. Herbivore communal latrines are only documented among mammals and their fossil record is exceptionally restricted to the late Cenozoic. Here w...

Recent palaeohistological studies on paramedian osteoderms of aetosaurs revealed the presence of growth lines (lines of arrested growth or LAGs) and a minimal or nonexistent secondary remodelling in the bone matrix of these elements. This feature allows the age of individuals to be estimated through growth line count. In the present contribution we...

Abstract Rhynchosaurs first appear in the Early Triassic fossil record and flourished during the late Carnian as the dominant members of several assemblages worldwide. In Argentina, the rhynchosaur record is currently restricted to the Ischigualasto Formation of late Carnian–earliest Norian age. Recent fieldwork in the new locality of Brazo del Pum...