Pula 2020 cretaceous turtle team

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Histriasaurus: the basal rebbachisaurid from Istria

The dinosaur bone bed near Bale

There are only three dinosaur species (two genera) from Croatia, that were properly described and named. Both of the new genera holotypes were determined and named by the Italian paleontologist Fabio Marco Dalla Vecchia. While one of them is an ichnospecies, Titanosaurimanus nana (Dalla Vecchia & Tarlao, 2000), based solely on its tracks, the other one is based on the fossil bones. It was a mid-sized rebbachisaurid Histriasaurus boscarollii (Dalla Vecchia, 1998)

Rebbachisauridae was a family of sauropod dinosaurs known from fragmentary fossil remains from the Cretaceous of South America, Africa, and Europe.

 In the photo is the small museum Ulika in an old town Bale, in  Istria, Croatia, where the holotype of Histriasaurus and the rest of the Croatian dinosaur fossils are housed. The dinosaur fossil site is just a couple of kilometres away. The dinosaur undersea graveyard is still a sort of terra incognita, because there was no funding for extensive excavation and research. Matt Lamanna told me there were attempts of getting funded form the National Geographic, but so far unsuccessful. Hopefully, the research in Bale will resume, soon.

A few rebbachisaurid dorsal vertebrae comparison (not exactly to scale): the Spanish Demandasaurus darwini (Fernández-Baldor et al.), 2011 - photo ©Fidel Torcida, the fossil housed at  EL Museo de Dinosaurios de Salas de los Infantes (A), the African Rebbachisaurus garasbae (Lavocat, 1954) - photo by ©Muséum National d’Histoire Natural where the fossil is housed (B), the Croatian Histriasaurus boscarollii (Dalla Vecchia, 1998) - photo by B. Krzic (C). 

An article on new Spanish rebbachisaurid.


My old Histriasaurus boscarollii restoration (from 2003?):

It is interesting noting that the only Croatian dinosaurs with names were never given a scientific and public attention they have deserved. There was no sculptural restoration, no postal stamp, no dedicated book. One feeble attempt to mark the presence of dinosaur fossil bones in Croatia was made by issuing a postal stamp . An iguanodontoid was featured in the image.

The recent Ulika museum is the first to give them the credit. Pity that the museum is still relatively unknown, although, it has been open for public almost a year ago.

More on sauropod tracks

 In 2009 I have discovered one of the dinoturbated sites near Pula. Since that time, I managed researching several more similar sites along the beach there. In the picture is a suropod footprint (Brontopodus sp.) that was surprisingly well preserved in 3D. You probably remember playing in a wet sand as a kid. The sand had to be wet and of the precisely right consistence and you had to be very careful while making a cast of your plastic dish or it would have collapsed right away. The sauropod cast was originally a negative footprint, that served as a mold. It was filled in with the sediment ( wet rudistic sand) brought by a rising tide, after the original substrate containing the impression dried and hardened a bit. Both sediments were eventually buried under more sediments and lithified.

In recent times, the sea eroded off the upper sedimenst freeing the cast.

The mid-Cretaceous (late Albian) subadult sauropod (titanosaur) right hind footprint cast (positive) from the dinoturbated beach area, which is full of tourists in the Summer time (A).  The same print in false colours to enhance the shape (C). My interpretative drawing of the impression (D).

The negative of the left hind sauropod footprint, which was probably left by the same animal and was the part of the same trackway. The little black bag measures 13cm in length (B).

The adult animal had a foot that measured some 140 cm in length.

 

A new titanosaur from the Early Cretaceous of China

(Image credit: University of Pennsylvania)

 A fossil of a new sauropod titanosaur, Yongjinglong datangi, has been discovered in northwestern China by University of Pennsylvania paleontologists. The dinosaur lived some 100 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period. The estimated length of this juvenile sauropod was about 20 meters. Adult animal of this species were probably larger.
The research was led by doctoral student Liguo Li and professor Peter Dodson.

Liguo Li: "The shoulder blade was very long, nearly 2 meters, with sides that were nearly parallel, unlike many other Titanosaurs whose scapulae bow outward." 

The dinosaur's vertebrae had large cavities in the interior. The research team believes the large cavities in dinosaur's vertebrae contained  air sacs.

Peter Dodson:
 "These spaces are unusually large in this species. It's believed that dinosaurs, like birds, had air sacs in their trunk, abdominal cavity and neck as a way of lightening the body." Image: University of Pennsylvania

 My restoration of  Yongjinglong datangi

Peter Dodson :
  "...Not only does the discovery point to the fact that Titanosaurs encompass a diverse group of dinosaurs, but it also supports the growing consensus that sauropods were a dominant group in the Early Cretaceous — a view that U.S. specimens alone could not confirm.
Based on U.S. fossils, it was once thought that sauropods dominated herbivorous dinosaur fauna during the Jurassic but became almost extinct during the Cretaceous," Dodson said. "We now realise that, in other parts of the world, particularly in South America and Asia, sauropod dinosaurs continued to flourish in the Cretaceous, so the thought that they were minor components is no longer a tenable view."
 (citation from;  http://www.science20.com/)

 BDW:
 Indeed, while researching the late Albian ichnofauna near Pula, Istria, which is roughly the same age as this Chinese titanosaur, I came to the similar conclusion. Sauropods were large and their tracks abundant in the coastal intertidal environment. They were apparently, competing for food with giant iguanodontoids and ankylosaurs.

Paper:   Li L-G, Li D-Q, You H-L, Dodson P (2014) A New Titanosaurian Sauropod from the Hekou Group (Lower Cretaceous) of the Lanzhou-Minhe Basin, Gansu Province, China. PLoS ONE 9(1): e85979.
 The whole paper is here free for download.