Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a small-sized titanosaurian dinosaur in the Brazilian state of São Paulo.
An artist’s impression of Ibirania parva. Image credit: Matheus Gadelha / Divulgação.
The newly-identified dinosaur species roamed our planet from the Late Santonian to the Early Campanian age of the Upper Cretaceous epoch, approximately 83 million years ago.
Named Ibirania parva, the ancient creature had an estimated body length of 5.7 m (18.7 feet).
It was a member of Titanosauria, a diverse group of long-necked sauropod dinosaurs that lived from the Late Jurassic epoch to the end of the Cretaceous period.
“Titanosauria is a clade of neosauropods with a remarkable diversity and worldwide distribution,” said Dr. Bruno Navarro, a paleontologist with the Museu de Zoologia at the Universidade de São Paulo, and his colleagues from Brazil and Germany.
“They are known to exhibit conspicuous body size disparity marked by the occurrence of giant and nanoid species.”
“They represent the most typical large-bodied herbivorous faunal component in the Late Cretaceous biotas from the southern continents.”
“Nonetheless, they are also present in Laurasia, with some forms from the Early Cretaceous.”
Skeletal reconstruction of Ibirania parva: recovered bone elements (colored) and missing bones (white) were reconstructed through comparisons with closely related species; orange elements represent the holotype, blue elements represent the referred specimens; the asterisk marks a reversed element for a better visualization. Scale bar – 1 m, human silhouette displays 1.8 m. Image credit: Navarro et al., doi: 10.5710/AMGH.25.08.2022.3477.
At least four specimens of Ibirania parva were recovered from an outcrop of the São José do Rio Preto Formation at Sítio dos Irmãos Garcia in Vila Ventura, northeastern São Paulo State, Brazil.
“The nanism observed in Ibirania parva is associated with the evolution of an endemic fauna in response to the stressed environment conditions of the São José do Rio Preto Formation, characterized by prolonged drought periods,” the paleontologists said.
They also found that Ibirania parva belonged to Saltasaurinae, a family of titanosaurian dinosaurs previously known by small-sized forms.
“This new species not only represents one of the smallest sauropods described to-date but, according to our expanded phylogenetic analysis, also represents to the first unequivocal saltasaurine titanosaurian reported for Brazil,” they said.
“In South America, saltasaurines display a conspicuous reduction in their body sizes, which has been explained as either a response to geographical restriction to a vast north-south coastal corridor of the Andean region in the latest Cretaceous or to occupation of new and restricted environments formerly occupied by diplodocoid sauropods.”
The team’s work appears in the journal Ameghiniana.
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Bruno A. Navarro et al. 2022. A new nanoid titanosaur (Dinosauria: Sauropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of Brazil. Ameghiniana 59 (5): 317-354; doi: 10.5710/AMGH.25.08.2022.3477
Source link: https://www.sci.news/paleontology/ibirania-parva-11205.html
