The analysis of fossils of hadrosaurs in Catalonia reveals the age of his death

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The analysis of fossils of hadrosaurs in Catalonia reveals the age of his death





The analysis of fossils of hadrosaurs in Catalonia reveals the age of his death


The site of Basturs Poble is what is known in English as a bonebed (a bed of bones, in Spanish), a geological layer that contains a large accumulation of fossils. It is about 70 million years old and is the only one in Europe that contains only remains of hadrosaurs. The excavations that have been carried out the last 10 years have recovered around a thousand fossils.



The remains are disarticulated and probably belong to a single species: Pararhabdodon isonensis. "We believe that the individuals died due to an unfavorable environmental condition, perhaps a period of extreme drought. After his death, the remains were displaced by the water and fossilized, but we know that the place where they died is not far from the site, "explains Víctor Fondevilla, researcher at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont (ICP) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) (Catalunya, Spain) and main author of the article.



The study published now in PLoS ONE has allowed analyzing the 270 fossil remains of this site prepared for study between skulls, jaws, teeth, vertebrae and bones of the extremities. The researchers have not only described and taken measurements of the remains, but they have analyzed the interior of the fossils to extract information about the age of the individuals to whom they belonged.



"We can cut the fossils and analyze their internal structure. This gives us a lot of information about the life cycle of individuals, "explains ICREA research professor at ICP, Meike Köhler. Similar to the growth rings of the trees, in the sections of the long bones appear lines that are an indicator of the stops of growth and that correspond to the alternation between favorable and unfavorable times. In this way, you can calculate the age at which they died.







Reconstruction of the lambeosaurine hadrosaur species Pararhabdodon isonensis. (Photo: Oscar Sanisidro (Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont))



With this system, paleontologists have detected that in the site there is a large number of juvenile individuals and, in a smaller proportion, subadult and adult individuals. On the other hand, individuals fresh from the egg have not been found. "We estimated that the youngest specimens died at two years of age and adults between 14 and 15," explains Fondevilla.



The fact of finding so many juveniles suggests that the accumulation of bones of Basturs Poble represents a natural population of herbivores, where juveniles tend to be more abundant. "It is also possible that the abundance of juvenile remains is due to the fact that they are the most vulnerable individuals to a crisis, and therefore they would have died in greater quantity than adults," says the study's principal investigator.



The hadrosaurs, also known as "duckbill" dinosaurs, are a group of ornithischian dinosaurs with a herbivorous diet that lived during the late Cretaceous. It is probably the best-known group of dinosaurs. Among the subfamilies of the group are the lambeosaurines, well represented in the Catalan sites.



These animals were characterized for having a robust body that reached medium and large sizes (with weights between one kilogram at birth to 3,000 in adults), with front legs smaller than the hind legs. This last feature allowed them to walk bipedally or quadruped indistinctly.



The skull was elongated and was finished in the shape of a duck's beak - hence its nickname - and its teeth were organized in the form of dental batteries. The most distinctive feature was its bony crest, formed by several more or less developed skull bones. The function of this ridge is not clear, but it is believed that it could function as a sounding board to amplify sounds and facilitate recognition among members of the same species. Other hypotheses suggest that they were structures that only the males presented to attract the females.



Pararhabdodonisonensis is a species only known in the Pallars Jussà. It was described in 1985 from some remains found in Sant Romà d'Abella and its specific name -isonensis- refers to the town of Isona, near the site. It measured between six and seven meters long and it is estimated that adults should weigh about three tons.



Catalonia is a country rich in fossiliferous sediments. Among them, those of the pre-Pyrenean basins stand out, which preserve the signs of the life of the final phase of the Cretaceous (between 70 and 66 million years ago). This is, in geological terms, very shortly before the great extinction that ended with many forms of life, including all the Noavian dinosaurs. In the sites of the Pyrenees, therefore, are the last dinosaurs that lived in Europe, a few hundred thousand years before they disappeared from the face of the Earth.



The Basturs Poble field was located by the scientific disseminator Marc Boada in August 2001. He found some fossil remains on the surface and contacted the palaeontologists of the Museu de la Conca Dellà, in Isona. A few months later a paleontological intervention was carried out that confirmed the exceptional nature of this site. After this first excavation, 12 more integrated campaigns have been carried out in research projects led by researchers Àngel Galobart, head of the Mesozoic Fauna Research Group of the ICP, and by Rodrigo Gaete, of the Conca Dellà Museum.



The fossils of Basturs Poble are preserved in the Conca Dellà Museum. There, in the dinosaurs showroom, there is a representation of the most spectacular bones of the site and a life-size reconstruction of Pararhabdodon isonensis. (Source: Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont)

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