José Ignacio Canudo

University of Zaragoza | UNIZAR · Faculty of Sciences (CIENCIAS)

The old Valfonda quarry is located at the northern end of the Maestrazgo Geopark in Alcorisa (Teruel). The quarry benefited stratified sandstones in banks up to several meters thick deposited in fluvial or alluvial fan systems during the late Eocene to early Oligocene. These sandstones are part of the detrital fill of the Alloza basin developed dur...

For the first time, a specimen of Pelophylax pueyoi Navás, 1922a has been recovered in situ, about 600 meters from the main entrance inside the Libros II mine (Teruel, Spain). The fossil comes from the Libros Gypsum Unit (Late Miocene), and represents a nearly complete articulated adult frog exposed in ventral view, with partial preservation of sof...

Surface collecting is the first and sometimes the only type of sampling carried out in many fossiliferous localities, including vertebrate microfossil assemblages. Nevertheless, it is rare to test how representative these surface-collected samples are of the palaeobiocoenosis. A first approach to the palaeontological analysis of Los Menires, a Barr...

New material of an iguanodontid styracosternan ornithopod from the Lower Cretaceous of the Iberian Peninsula is described. The cranial and postcranial skeletal remains are from the Barranco del Hocino-1 site. These fossils (Iguanodontidae sensu Xu et al., 2018) represent the first medium-sized styracosternan from the Upper Sequence of the Blesa For...

This work characterizes for the first time the 500–700 m-thick uppermost Cretaceous continental sedimentary succession of the Allueva Fm recorded in the northeastern margin of the Iberian basin, in the Montalbán subbasin (Maestrazgo domain, Spain). The middle-upper Campanian age of this unit constrained here by new paleomagnetic and biostratigraphi...

The valleys of Bielsa and Chistau/Gistau, located at the headwaters of the Cinca river, in the Pyrenees of Alto Aragon, present interesting mineralizations related to the metamorphic aureole of several granitic batholiths that have been exploited for centuries, giving rise to an interesting mining heritage. Three mineralizations can be highlighted....

The Ebro Basin (Spain) is one of the few worldwide areas where Palaeogene avian and mammal tracksites have been found. A new unpublished tracksite known as La Sagarreta is here described. The tracksite is located in a sandstone-dominated outcrop from the Early Oligocene Peralta Formation in the northern-central sector of the basin. Six different ic...

Crocodylomorph eggs and eggshells are known as old as the Late Jurassic and are frequent components of most multiootaxic eggshell assemblages. Classified within the oofamily Krokolithidae, thei histo- and ultrastructures are conservative throughout geological time, characterised by inverted-trapezoid-shaped shell units that grow from highly spaced...

The pan-sirenian Bauplan is conservative, probably owing to the constraints of adaptation to an aquatic lifestyle. Gathering morphological data from extinct forms is complex, resulting in poorly resolved phylogenies for stem pansirenians. Extant sirenians ossify the falx cerebri and the tentorium cerebelli, membranes of the dura mater of the brain...

With 17 species formally identified throughout the world, Rebbachisauridae is, at present, the best-represented group of South American diplodocoids, and it has a temporal record ranging from the Barremian up to the Turonian. Defined as all diplodocoids more closely related to Rebbachisaurus garasbae than to Diplodocus carnegii, these sauropods are...

A review of the type material of the crocodylomorph ichnotaxon Crocodylopodus meijidei Fuentes Vidarte and Meijide Calvo, 2001 from the Berriasian of Spain is carried out. The review allows a better characterization of this type ichnotaxon and provides interesting new data on the candidate trackmakers and especially on their locomotion. Three diffe...

The origin of the last sauropod dinosaur communities in Europe and their evolution during the final 15 million years of the Cretaceous have become a complex phylogenetic and palaeobiogeographic puzzle characterized by the controversy on the alleged coexistence of immigrant, Gondwana-related taxa alongside relictual and insular clades. In this conte...

Dinosaur tracks have been identified in several Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous sedimentary units across the Maestrazgo Basin in eastern Iberia, which are preserved in a variety of transitional and continental paleoenvironments. Here, we described the lower Barremian San Benón tracksite with the first occurrence of clear dinosaur tracks in the El C...

The South Pyrenean Basin (northeast Spain) has yielded a rich and diverse collection of vertebrate fossil remains from the uppermost Cretaceous (upper Maastrichtian), amongst which Crocodylomorpha is one of the best represented clades. This record includes remains of the last representatives of the basal eusuchian clade Allodaposuchidae prior to it...

A total of 227 theropod teeth have so far been recovered from the upper Campanian Laño site (northern Iberian Peninsula). The teeth were studied for their qualitative and quantitative features. From the theropod sample found at Laño, seven morphotypes attributed to five taxa are identified: a medium to large abelisaurid (Arcovenator sp.) and four s...

Bioerosions produced by the osteophagous diet of animals that fed on dinosaur bones are very scarce in the European fossil record. Herein we present bioerosion on hadrosaurid remains from the Maastrichtian Tremp Formation of the Pyrenean Basin, which is only the second such case recorded from the Iberian-Occitan Plate besides a sauropod from the Ju...

Upper Cretaceous outcrops of the South-Central Pyrenees in northeastern Spain show a rich palaeontological record of eggs and eggshells of vertebrates, in particular dinosaurs. The fossil site of Blasi 2B (Arén, Huesca) is added to the oological record of the Late Maastrichtian, with an association of at least five ootypes of dinosaur eggshells (on...

In the last years, the previously unknown Eocene macrovertebrate fossil record of the Ainsa Basin (Southern Pyrenees Basin, Huesca, Spain) has been improved. It is composed by pleurodiran and cryptodiran testudines and the basal sirenian Sobrarbesiren cardieli. In 2018, a survey campaign was conducted to search for new Eocene sirenian fossil sites...

The Sobrarbe-Pirineos UNESCO Global Geopark, located in the Central Pyrenees, is a region of remarkable geodiversity that includes extensive Eocene fossil-bearing sites and constitutes an important archive of paleobiodiversity. The Sobrarbe-Piri-neos Geopark hosts outcrops of Eocene formations bearing an unusual abundance and diversity of fossils f...

Pansirenia es un orden de mamíferos marinos afroterios cuyo registro fósil comienza en el Eoceno inferior. En su adaptación a la vida acuática han sufrido numerosas modificaciones corporales incluyendo el desarrollo de una aleta caudal horizontal, principal medio de propulsión en el agua de los sirenios actuales (Trichechus spp. y Dugong dugon). Au...

The reconstruction of the latest Jurassic–Early Cretaceous evolution of the Torrelapaja Subbasin (Cameros Basin, Spain) resulted in the characterization of three synrift sequences (SS-1, SS-2 and SS-3) bounded by major unconformities. Three major NW-SE normal faults combined with smaller scale faults of variable direction (around NE-SW) controlled...

En la guía de campo se realizan observaciones y se explican los aspectos mas relevantess de las tres formaciones definidas en el tránsito Jurásico-Cretácico de la subcuenca de Galve. Se explican cuatro paradas en puntos de particular interés debido a la presencia de yacimientos de dinosaurios y de sus pisadas (icnitas). En Ababuj y la Peñuela se vi...

The Eocene record of turtle eggshells is scarce, with a single unconfirmed report from France. This scarcity contrasts with the great abundance of osteological remains, distributed over a wide palaeogeographical range as a result of climatic warmth. In this paper, we describe the first definitive Eocene Testudoolithidae eggshell fragments attributa...

The deposits corresponding to the Upper Cretaceous Neuquén and San Jorge Gulf basins from northern and central Patagonia have provided two of the most complete sequences of terrestrial vertebrate faunas of all Gondwanan landmasses. Among the carnivorous components, the carcharodontosaurid theropods appeared as common elements during the Early Creta...

Throughout the evolutionary history of Avialae, several members of this clade have evolved into giant forms, in different time periods and ecological contexts. In Europe, the first birds that show this condition, the Gargantuaviidae, occur during the Late Cretaceous (late Campanian–early Maastrichtian), but it is during the Paleogene when more grou...

Both cerebral hemispheres are separated by a membrane projection of the brain dura matter, which is attached to the ventral surface of the parietal named the falx cerebri. Another membrane, the tentorium cerebelli, separates the upper surface of the cerebellum and the occipital lobes. These membranes ossify in some mammals such as primates, marsupi...

A partial skeleton of a pleurosternid turtle (Paracryptodira), from the Jurassic-Cretaceous transition at the Spanish locality of Ágreda (Moncayo Region, Soria Province), is presented here. Its partial skull represents the third of this lineage to be recognised in the European record, with the previously known specimens corresponding to British spe...

The South-Pyrenean Basin (northeastern Spain) has yielded a rich and diverse record of Upper Cretaceous (uppermost Campanian−uppermost Maastrichtian) vertebrate fossils, including the remains of some of the last European dinosaurs prior to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event. In this work, we update and characterize the vertebrate foss...

One of the most fascinating research topics in the field of sauropod dinosaurs is the evolution of gigantism. In the particular case of Titanosauria, the record of multi-ton species (those exceeding 40 tons) comes mainly from Patagonia. The record of super-sized titanosaur sauropods has traditionally been extremely fragmentary, although recent disc...

The present paper studies a humerus (MDS-VPCR, 214) recovered from the site of Valdepalazuelos-Tenadas del Carrascal (Burgos, Spain). Geologically, it is located at the base of the Rupelo Formation (Cameros Basin), which is Tithonian-Berriasian in age. This formation is interpreted as shallow lacustrine/palustrine deposits with low-gradient margins...

In the transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic environment, sirenian marine mammals reduced and lost their hind limbs and developed a horizontal caudal fin, the main propulsive organ in extant sirenians. Quadrupedal forms are only known from the Eocene and are represented by three different clades: the amphibious “prorastomids,” the aquatic qua...

A combined facies and clay mineralogy analysis of the continental succession recorded in the lower part of the Blesa Formation (early Barremian, Oliete subbasin, NE Spain) allowed us to specify the palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental conditions under which this sedimentary record originated. Six outcrops including clays, clays/marls and dm-thick...

Galvesaurus herreroi is a sauropod from the Villar del Arzobispo Formation (late Kimmeridgian-early Tithonian), from the municipality of Galve (Teruel). Its phylogenetic relations have been long debated, so we carried out a phylogenetic analysis, using a new data matrix recently published by Carballido et al. (2017). The characters of Galvesaurus w...

Pleurodiran turtles are relatively abundant in the Eocene record of Europe, being mostly represented by Podocnemididae. Two genera have been identified. The most abundant and diverse is the well-known freshwater Neochelys. The other is Eocenochelus. The record of this poorly-known genus is very scarce. It is the only representative of the Upper Cre...

Sequence-stratigraphic, biostratigraphic and strontium-isotopic data have made it possible to update what is known of the stratigraphy and sedimentary evolution of the Kimmeridgian–Berriasian synrift successions recorded in four subbasins (Aguilón, Oliete, Morella, Galve) of the central Iberian Rift System (NE Spain). The studied successions are ar...

RESUMEN Larra 4 es un yacimiento del Pirineo aragonés que presenta una rica asociación fósil de restos de vertebrados, incluyendo dinosaurios hadrosáuridos y terópodos, crocodiloformos, anfibios y peces. Por su edad (Maastrichtiense terminal). Este yacimiento aporta información relevante sobre la diversidad de los ecosistemas en este sector de Iber...

The pterosaur record from the Iberian Peninsula is mostly scarce and undefined, but in the last few years some new taxa have been described from different Lower Cretaceous sites of Spain. Here we describe a new genus and species of toothed pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Barremian of the Iberian Peninsula, Iberodactylus andreui gen. et sp. nov.,...

Los dugónguidos son mamíferos secundariamente adaptados a la vida acuática que aparecieron en el Eoceno. A diferencia de los sirenios cuadrúpedos (prorastómidos, protosirénidos y Sobrarbesiren), los dugónguidos eocenos, aunque con una pelvis y un fémur vestigiales, han perdido las extremidades posteriores externas y son formas totalmente acuáticas....

Rebbachisaurids are a group of basal diplodocimorph sauropods that diversified in Gondwana at the end of the Early Cretaceous and the beginning of the Late Cretaceous. It is a group of great palaeobiogeographical interest, for it clearly illustrates various processes of dispersal throughout Gondwana and to Laurasia prior to the breakup of Africa an...

New Crocodylomorpha swim tracks from the lower Maastrichtian of the Southern Pyrenees are described. They consist of scratch marks of manus and pes, as well as striae and claw impressions. This new finding enhances the scarce record of these ichnofossils in the Upper Cretaceous.

Los fósiles tienen un indudable valor patrimonial por eso tiene sentido su inclusión en las leyes de patrimonio cultural o natural. Es una polémica estéril seguir discutiendo si su ubicación es más adecuada en uno u otro ámbito, lo importante es que la administración diseñe y favorezca las estrategias de conservación, protección e investigación de...

An enlarged theropod manual ungual (CSC1-4) from the Weald facies of Spain is described. The claw was found in the fossil locality of Caña Seca 1, Teruel province, within the El Castellar Formation of early Barremian (Early Cretaceous) in age. CSC1-4 is morphologically closer to megalosauroids than to any other theropod clade bearing enlarged manu...

Sirenians are the only extant herbivorous mammals fully adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. They originated in Africa during the Paleocene from an undetermined clade of afrotherian mammals, and by the end of the Eocene they were widely distributed across the tropical latitudes. Here we introduce Sobrarbesiren cardieli gen. et sp. nov. It is the first...

A review of the onset of the synrift sedimentation and synsedimentary extensional tectonics of the Oliete sub-basin (north- western Maestrazgo basin, East Spain) is presented here based on new data acquired after extensive sedimentological, struc- tural and palaeontological analysis of the Barremian Blesa Fm. The lower boundary of the Blesa Fm is a...

Introduction: Barranco del Hocino-1 is a new fossil site located near Estercuel, Teruel province, Spain. The fossil site is located geologically within the Oliete sub-basin, in the Blesa Formation (Barremian in age). Barranco del Hocino-1 shows a diverse assemblage of tetrapod vertebrates similar to other sites in the Blesa Formation. Materials and...

PurposeCrocodylomorpha has been a highly morphologically and ecologically diverse clade over time. During the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, several crocodylomorph lineages colonized the marine environment; however, by the late Early Cretaceous the extinction of Thalattosuchia and the origination of new marine forms occur, and the “Middle” Cretaceous is a...

Here we describe an unusually high concentration (several tenths of thousands) of turtle eggshell fragments from the Castejón de Sobrarbe-41 (CS-41) fossil site (Lutetian, middle Eocene). CS-41 is a sirenian dominated bonebed located in the Sobrarbe Formation, Ainsa Basin, Huesca, Northern Spain. CS-41 is associated with overbank settings, related...

Rionegrochelys caldieroi de la Fuente, Maniel, and Jannello gen. et sp. nov. is a Late Cretaceous turtle from Rio Negro Province, Argentina. The holotype and the referred specimens of this new species show an unusual shell morphology and microanatomy. The proportion between the carapace and plastron and the peculiar morphology of the shell such as...