New tiny basal sauropodomorph from Upper Triassic of Brazil + ornithopod dinosaur tibia from Lower Cretaceous of Spain
Ben Creisler
A new tiny basal Sauropodomorpha (Dinosauria: Saurischia) from the Santa Maria Supersequence, Upper Triassic of southern Brazil
Palaeoworld 201064
doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palwor.2025.201064
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871174X2500157X Palaeoworld
The Upper Triassic outcrops of Brazil and Argentina have provided important information on the earliest stages of the dinosaur radiation. Dinosaurian taxa have been increasingly discovered in these strata, contributing to the diversity of the group. Here we describe elements of dinosaurs that are among the smallest known from the Triassic of southern Brazil that show evidence of interrupted osteological growth. The material collected from the Cerro da Alemoa outcrop consists of a humerus, a metatarsal III, an ungual phalanx, a neural arch, and a vertebral centrum. Phylogenetic analysis was facilitated by anatomical comparisons, which resulted in the placement of specimen UFSM11326 within the Carnian sauropodomorph clade as a whole. The analysis of thin sections of the humerus and metatarsal III revealed a highly fragmented compact cortical structure, composed mainly of fibrolamellar bone. This was mostly composed of woven bone, surrounded by longitudinal and reticular vascularisation. The presence of an annulus and a line of arrested growth was also observed. Furthermore, the observed features suggest an individual still in development, having already undergone its first growth arrest and being midway through its second cycle. These analyses suggest ontogenetic features of a juvenile sauropodomorph with a single growth arrest. Our results provide evidence for novel growth strategies during the early evolution of this group, leading to the emergence of small-bodied dinosaurs in the Triassic.
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Juan Maíllo Pérez, Jerome Hidalgo-Sanz, Miguel Moreno-Azanza & José Manuel Gasca-Pérez (2025)
Osteohistología e implicaciones locomotoras a partir de una tibia de dinosaurio ornitópodo de la Formación El Castellar (Cretácico Inferior, Teruel)
Osteohistology and locomotor implications from an ornithopod dinosaur tibia from the El Castellar Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Teruel)
Geogaceta 78:71-74 (in Spanish)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55407/geogaceta113669
https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/geogaceta/article/view/113669
The study of osteohistology in dinosaurs allows us to evaluate growth patterns and their relationship with biomechanical changes. In this paper we analyse a tibia assigned to an undetermined iguanodontid from the Masía de los Cerezos site (El Castellar Formation, Lower Cretaceous, Teruel). The histological section reveals a complex cortical structure, characterised by an asymmetric vascular distribution, anterolateral cortical thickening and the presence of compacted coarse cancellous tissue. This microanatomy suggests a redistribution of loads, possibly associated with a postural change prior to skeletal maturity. The results highlight the importance of the osteohistological study in Iguanodontia to understand the relationship between ontogeny and locomotion, and underline the need to extend the analysis to more taxa and ontogenetic stages to assess microanatomical variability within this group.
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Gregory Paul
Regarding the over the top brouhaha over new dinosaur names, there is a need for some discussion over the events, including a dive into the long term problems of the much of the paleo community. Not going to go into the Utetitan matter because I dealt with that elsewhere.
To start with, the FCPTD had stated in print that the galvensis material was open for analysis by all. So the big ruckus about Sancarlo et al. not getting permission was way overblown. The series of FCPTD papers figure and describe the remains very well, right? It follows that the published data is sufficient for follow up work by others. The FCPTD could have assigned the iguanodont a new genus starting ten years ago until now. They show no signs of removing it from its very problematic assignment to Iguanodon. It was open to and awaiting renaming in the peer reviewed literature.
When I renamed I. lakotaensis 20 yrs ago Dakotadon, I did not first tell Dave Weishampel who had put it in Iquanodon. After I published the reassignment, he said not a problem, was a good idea actually. He did not have the controlling attitude that so many have.
There have been plenty of times when people after gone after names I coined without letting me know about it before the criticism pops up in the literature in the usual manner. OK, and fine. I may object strongly to criticism for technical reasons, but the lack of prior notification is not an issue. Why would it be?
Way back at the Smithsonian I noticed that a partial skull labeled Camarasaurus was actually Brachiosaurus. I said so in the card in the drawer. I guess I was thinking of publishing on it someday, or maybe not, did not get around to it. Without telling me my buddy Ken C. published it, first knew that when saw the paper. Did I have a hissy fit about it? No. Had I wanted priority I would have gotten my paleo butt in gear and done it. So no reason for complaint. I am a grown-up. (I would have done better drawings though;)
A while back Mike Taylor decided to elevate Giraffatitan – fab name BTW, started the titan trend in sauropod names -- that I had earlier coined to genus status. Did he contact me and suggest I get involved? No. Did I care? No. It was good to see the name finally get to that position. I had not yet done so, so it was fair game. Science marches on and all that. Good job Mike.
I am not a controlling person. Way more laid back than a lot of folk it seems -- and I am not the most laid back person on the planet.
Before I give a recent example of lack of the absence of notification regarding my work, a little story. Back in 2010 Nudds and Dyke published in Science a paper that said the flight feathers of Archaeopteryx were too weak for powered flight. I sent in a reply. That as per normal scientific procedures was sent to N&D so they could have a gander at it before publication (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1192963). That is the way it should be. Right? Any disagree?
In 2022 I and colleagues published to first in-depth, large data set analysis of the species of Tyrannosaurus, with two new species. No one else was doing that, about time if you think about it. Then, just a few weeks later Carr et al. (2022) severely went after Paul et al. in the same journal. We had no idea, no opportunity to view it, review it, or opportunity to respond to it.
Did we three complain about the lack of notice? No. Did the paleo community say hey Carr et al., you should not have surprised Paul and company like that? No. Some of those who were involved in Carr et al. are now going on about the courtesy-ethics of the work of Sancarlo et al, and me. There is that story about those living in glass houses not tossing rocks at others. Get the drift here?
Seriously. Before complaining be sure the complaint does not apply to yourself. If you go after me I will raise past analogous issues if they pertain. Obviously. I always do, don’t people learn? Really, you come at me you better not have analogous skeletons in your particular paleocloset. I am laid back about a lot of things, but not everything.
Gregory Paul
So exactly what is wrong with Paulodon? Not sure of the full taxohistorical story, but from 1869 to 1996 assorted fossils as remote as N. Amer and Asia were being dropped into Iguanodon. That needed to be put to a stop. In three ground breaking works from 2006-10 I did that. So putting my name on an iguanodont makes entirely good sense. Especially one that was being dropped into Iguanodon despite the issues with doing that, and no one else was doing anything about that. Why is this a problem?
Because of who it is named after. It is obvious that a lot of the nonsense had to do with the name Paulodon. Had it been Megadon would people have cared all that much? Not likely. Or Ryanodon? A related issue I did not think of is that I was to be the first living dinosaur dude to have a genus name, I think that is correct. Did not realize that. There have been Mesozoic creatures named after living media celebs, Attenborosaurus, Crichtonsaurus, Crichtonpelta – and he got two. There are a number of pterosaur genera named after living paleos. Why has it not been more of practice to name dinosaur genera after extant paleos – a hadrosaur after Horner, a theropod after Holtz, how about a sauropod after Curtice, iguanodont after Norman – you get the drift. Better doing that positive thing than whining about Paulodon and talking about a damn boycott. Thanks everyone.
Had someone named something Normanodon would there have been a fuss? Of course not, nor should there have been.
If I had to do it again I would have told Franco to drop me from the title. To protect him. He did not know about the paleo buzz saw he was walking into, and maybe I should have foreseen it. My bad. Franco has been horrified. Not having the experience, or language skills, to deal with, I have had to stand up for him. Anyone feel bad about how you treated him without the courtesy of saying hi to him, can we discuss matters? Me got thick skin being in dinosaurology since the 70s. I know the score.
But as the song says, it’s too late baby, the name is there. The treatment of the name by Wikipedia is confused and anti-science. Paulodon is in the peer-reviewed literature. Yet there is no entry, instead under Iguandon it is (=Paulodon). There has been no subsequent paper showing that gelvensis really is in Iguanodon. It’s just been an online dispute with little technical content, that violates Wikipedia rules.
The only dinosaur name that meets ICZN rules that is being boycotted is Ajancingenia, the paper it seems having included plagiarism but it is rather vague. Nor do the patently spurious croc names in the vanity journal Aust J Herp have anything to do with this situation.
The talk about boycotts is a dangerous slippery slope. It risks the practice becoming a normal procedure when one set of researchers feels they have cause to ignore names for what will, as always happens on slippery slopes, become a growing array of reasons. Exactly what has been avoided to date.
I am not Sancarlo’s mentor nor he my protégé. He is doing his own things, sometimes in collaboration with other, that I often know little about. Sometimes when I have disagreed with items he goes ahead and does it anyhow.
About where the Franco et al. paper was published. Not in one of those high impact, widely media covered, job seeking aiding, tenure promoting, grant seeking facilitating journals - you know, the ones that occasionally have to do big retractions. As per The Lancet and that fake autism-vaccine paper that has resulted in Trump/RFK running and ruining the once vaunted American medical complex. Science and Nature occasionally pull papers. The Science paper I refuted should have been – why did the paleo community not call for it to be? How about the Sander et al. and Perucetus studies in Sci and Nat that overbloated marine animals many, many fold, when all that had to be done were standard profile-skeletals that would have produced proper sizes? And limited their publication to less prestigious journals. Still in place. (At the time instead of ranting for a retraction, I and Asier L. compiled an exhaustive retraction for publication) Not a secret that high impact publications are more about appearances than reliable quality. It has been documented in the peer-reviewed literature that they are actually lower in average scientific quality, and why (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00037/full; https://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/01/even-without-retractions-top-journals-publish-the-least-reliable-science). With this well known, one can be excused for thinking that the effort to discredit publishing outside a limited set of approved publications is part of the power play that some are using to try to manipulate the situation the way they wish. It’s fake bunk.
And how about invited book chapters? That is usually a bunch of people who are comfortable with one another. Not complaining, I have done that myself many times. None of my submissions rejected there. But if PR book chapters are good, why must journal papers be submitted to the journals with high rejection rates?
There is good reason to publish outside of the paleo mainstream journals. Those are self- reinforcement bubbles prone to favor the current top clique consensus. We all do it. We recommend the reviewers we figure will favor what we think, and exclude those we think will be biased against us (sometimes with full justification). The circular review system was a reason why the ETRH remained in force for so long despite, as Z&N just helped to show, it rested on untenable ideas. So if one has an idea out of the mainstream, why would they not go towards a less hostile set of journals?
About the journal Mesozoic. The one that people are now supposed it seems to not submit papers to, and those there need to be retracted. I spent a few days going through my latest tyrannosaur paper that was in Mesozoic to respond and in most cases adjust the paper to meet the extensive and very good review comments. Part of a large scientific publishing complex many of which are cost-free for authors even when open access, the journal does reject papers, or require extensive revisions.
Gregory Paul
Tom H. says the Sancarlo et al. paper is analogous to the issue of Eocarcharia (https://www.facebook.com/thomas.holtz/posts/10116223331450578). No. That was a newly named genus. Even then it was not ethically necessary to contact the first namers, but fine to do so. The FCPTD folks put an early Barremian iguanodont into an at least late Barremian or maybe later genus that is the 2nd named dinosaur genus a couple centuries ago, just after the use of that genus had been ceased as a wastebasket taxon. It was waiting to be challenged.
I did my last iguano paper I think in 2010. There I noted that the absence of a description of the Dollodon holotype made further research not viable. So I had no interest in working on the problem until that megapaper comes out which will happen fairly soon:) If the paper as I am pretty sure it will affirms Dollodon, then there might not be a point in my doing anything more on the clade – yes I know so many are dismayed to read that. There is that I. galvensis thing, but I figured someone else will probably deal with that not all that big issue at some point.
And then hooray! Franco told me he and others were going to do it. Great! Then I won’t have to handle it -- and a better prospect of not having to work on iguanodonts again:) That would be nice. They mentioned that they were going to name it after me. Now I already have a couple of taxa tagged pauli so not a big deal, but another won’t hurt. I do have an ego. In any case let them take care of it. Did I warn Franco to first contact the FCPTD team? Did not even pop into my pretty little head. And why would it? Nobody ever had done so regarding my work over lo these many decades. Not a complaint on the lack of notification, is just my experience. 3 years ago had well let’s see here, Carr, Napoli, Brusatte, Holtz, Hone, Williamson, Zanno, contacted me and Scott and said hey guys we have issues with your paper and can we see if we can resolve them? Nope. Not contacting before publishing contrary opinions has gone on since science started. Why would I have thought to say anything, about a minor paper that looked like an about time thing to me?
Franco mentioned progress a few times but I did not pay much attention, kind of a yawn thing. Clunky beasts, iguanodonts are not my fav dinosaurs, I prefer the sleeker hadrosaurs which I was the first to restore correctly with those way cool down curved anterior dorsals that everyone now does. But I digress. Franco then excitedly said it was about to be published, then it was and he was feeling proud about his first publication, naming a dinosaur after a noted paleontologist, and the entry was then posted on Wikipedia!
Then, BANG, the nastiness that dinopaleo is prone to came out. In public, globally. Did any of you who go on about first privately contacting others you disagree with, think of sending a polite message to Franco expressing your concerns before publicly going on about taxonomic ethics, vandalism and harvesting, boycotts, retractions, bans on publication? NO. Not one. Have any said to others hey wait a minute, this is dinopaleo, not say vaccine useage we are engaged in here? Try to calm matters down like adults? No. It was a classic mass panic in which self-reinforcing discourse resulted in a childish mob mentality without fact checking, egged on by online chat. Just the sort of digital trap we are all warned against falling into. All high and mighty lecturing and hectoring, sometimes by those who have those skeletons in your closets. Not a thought as to how it made the authors or me feel.
As usual for such messes it descended yet further into a base conspiracy theory. Oh, you see, that Greg Paul so wants a (third) dino named after him he got it all started and pulled out of the paper so a fragmentary dinosaur (he barely cares about) will be named after him! How sneaky of all of them! How inane can people get? Did anyone send me a private message asking me what happened? Including my long term colleagues? No. Did anyone publicly say hey people knock it off? No. It was classic public rumor mongering gone wild which is always deeply, profoundly, unethical to participate in. How can people do such things?
Wikipedia dropped the entry and Paulodon is now a junior synonym of Iguanodon. Entirely on online chat, no explanation. When had that happened before?
Thomas Richard Holtz
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Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
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Mickey Mortimer
Gregory Paul
Now, the Chinese sauropods. I am going to rename every single one of them!
What do you think about that!
Gotcha:)
I have no plans to. I have seen the comment by some American-Chinese researchers that seems to imply they are dealing with the situation. I hope upon the paleodeities that is true. Wish they had made their plans more clear. Are they thinking about it, or is it a real project? Could they let us know please? I do object to the assertion that the Chinese publications are not adequate to diagnose the taxa. They did remarkable work under terrible circumstances. Check out the Omeisaurus junghsiensis description. Done in 1939, when China had been viciously invaded by Japan. Specimen very nicely illustrated. The Chinese works on the omeisaurs and mamenchisaurs are generally well done, including images. The problem is how for reasons obscure they were over lumped.
The growing requirement that naming taxa, whether brand spanking new, or old and needing revision, requires massive effort in travel, imaging, character scoring, and so on has gotten out of hand. Good when it can be done, but nor critical. And it is damaging the field when taken too far.
Think it over. How many dinosaurologists with budgets and time for doing the exhaustive descriptions are there? That is an actual question. I see 100 as a figure, maybe somewhat low. And how much money do they have? Problem is that there are way too many specimens newly dug up and in collections sometimes since the early 1900s to be dealt with using the new standards. It is slowing things down. It will never be possible to catch up. All the more so as paleo budgets are cut. Things need to be sped up.
Not so long ago lots of dinosaurs were being named on brief analyses, the Sereno et al. papers in Science etc. being examples. You have a new form of sauropod skeleton from a new place, so have some images done, get a decent diagnosis, and slap on the name say Jobaria. The list of such names is long. Now at least folks have a name tag to put on those. About the sinosauropods, if there is a major exhaustive effort going on like Tschopp et al. good. If not how long are things to drag on? 5 years, 10, 20+. In that case something like what I did with iguanodonts, and Carpenter was well, would get new names in place. Is easy to tell that hochuanensis and youngi are not in the same genus as constructus, and tianfuensis is not con-generic with junghsiensis. Not that I particularly want to do it. (The Chinese as it happens are now putting out these way cool big 1/350 scale super detailed models of British WW1 battleships and battlecruisers via digital 3-D scanning that come almost preassmenbled and I want to get as many of those done as I can!)
Gregory Paul
Now a bit;) about a paleo subject I do care a whole lot about, the TT-zone tyrannosaur taxa. Many are of the opinion that specimens need to be in appropriate public institutions. And when a new specimen has been published in good detail, then it is of course immediately open to the community at large for further work including disagreements about analysis and naming. That’s the deal. So Bloody Mary gets into an institution, is assigned a specimen number, and is published in an extensive (made possible these days by those online supplements), quality paper in the leading international science journal, firmly placed in a previously named taxon. All the rules of the accession deal had been met.
Franco had told me in the summer that I was incorrect in Mesozoic (https://www.mapress.com/mz/article/view/mesozoic.2.2.1) to place BM in an already named genus. Yeah, OK, he was right, he noted features I had not. So we are in the process of getting what we have been coming out with ASAP after BM is published and we can take that into account, as per the standard scientific race….
…and then what???? It is now unethical to publish on BM until the second paper??? Has that ever happened before??? If Z&N had been a brief notice with maybe a pic of the skull and a few other items, that would be one thing. But the Nature paper is a large tome chock full of data.
If Z&N’s paper #2 comes out in short order ours may still be in processing at some level. But what if it takes longer than they think? What if it goes into those repeat reviews? Many do not think BM belongs in Nano, so they may have a hard time getting past that. How long do folks have to wait? In this case, and the future if this becomes yet a new level of restraint?
And this when Z&N are not even intending to give BM a new name!
And Z&N did not cite yours truly in their paper to the degree they should have (see below).
Think it through people. Z&N are not following the above rules they have been advocates of. They are setting a new precedent any can use in the future if they establish the principle. Yet another push back on run-of-the-mill academic freedom in favor of yet more paleo bureaucratic sluggishness that has been weighing down the field.
I know a bunch of mainstream paleos going way back. Their general attitude is BM has specimen number, its published, is open for being made into a holotype that Z&N could have done but did not, so what is the problem?
Telling researchers that the high impact paper they just published describing a fossil before others publish a contrary paper, or getting their permission to do so, is NOT standard procedure. Recent example.
The presentation of Perucetus in Nature. The team had spent long hard years finding, excavating, preparing, documenting, describing, and estimating the size of the biggest beast of its age. After it was published in Nature did the team request others hold off on publishing different mass estimates until they got a more complete description published, perhaps with revised mass estimates in view of the negative reaction they immediately got? And did those who disagreed with the 80-350 tonne mass estimate contact the team and get permission before publishing? In quick order Motani & Pyenson went right ahead and published a refutation of the high masses. Did Bianucci et al. whine about that? No, they understand that once a fossil specimen is described and analyzed it’s the free market of science. Did other protest against M&P for being discourteous and unethical? Not that I recall.
And, as I noted on another DMG post, Z&N engaged in some ethical issues in their paper. In the past reviewers of some of my studies have told me to include more priority noting citations. I am very pro doing that. Check out Sancarlo’s and my preprint. It’s chock full of references for all sorts of items, the more the better. Z&N are cited endlessly, often more than once in the same paragraph. Usually in agreement, sometimes not. That is how it is supposed to work. Right?
Half of my Mesozoic paper was about the small TT-zone baso-eutyrannosaurs. Z&N do cite it. Once. Never again to give readers notification of specific issues that I have priority on. In particular, they explain how the long armed baso-eutyrannosaurs may have come west like the Clampetts from Appalachia. Great idea! That I presented in greater detail in Mesozoic. I am very proud of that, it is likely to become the paradigm, I naturally want those who in the future discuss my ground breaking hypothesis and cite Paul (2025) as its origin, and Z&N don’t acknowledge that in their paper read by lots of folks, and kinda seem to be taking credit for it. Sure enough online folks are crediting Z&N with the idea I already published. In Nature Z&N do something that I like, they note that there might by multiple species of Tyrannosaurus after all. They cite Paul et al (2022). OK. Then they cite how Carr et al refuted that particular analysis. Correct, but only in that the paper was published. They call for new research. Good. And of course they then cite my new Mesozoic paper that has whole lots of new data in the issue – it’s already in their reference list after all. Ha, just kidding! They don’t add a citation for that purpose. So the countless people who read the Z&N article are left unaware that a new study has in fact been published that they can then check out. Who cautioned researchers to not use the likes of Nano, Jane, BM to restore the ontogeny of Tyrannosaurus? I did before Z&N, who do not cite that. I asked Zanno to add the items – which are just the reference #s in the text, in the final version. This is basic courtesy and ethics stuff.
So. Z&N and others are upset that Franco and I are not doing the newly invented courtesy and ethical item of not yet publishing on a specimen that has been published. That after they did not do the standard courtesy of citing my major paper on baso-eutyrannosaurs as applicable. How many in our place would be good with that?
It is not just Z&N. Griffin et al’s Science paper does not cite my Mesozoic paper even though its includes growth calculations and graphics. This is a general problem. In 1988 I was the first to publish a highly innovative, extensive paper in the venerable Journal of Paleontology on why polar dinosaurs needed to be endothermic to survive Alaskan winters, and migrating away from them was not energetically practical. It should be a standard citation in all papers on the subject. Never see it. My 1997 paper on restoring body masses is cited all the time as well it should be. That was not peer reviewed. So I did what many say I should and published in a classic paleo journal and got nothing out of it. Published in a nonpeer reviewed conference book and it is well known. And people keep telling me to stick to the high impact journals. Why would I feel that is an urgent requirement? After I and my colleagues published on the Tyrannosaurus species in a mainline journal, only weeks later to be surprised by a quickie rebuttal? See my point?
A professional paleo tells me that when he tries to cite my research, he is sometimes discouraged by reviewers on the basis that it makes his work look nonprofessional. That is sheer antiscientific paleopolitics that shows how unprofessional and personal the field is.
About my wanting to name BM. That is not spur of the moment, it goes way back based on analysis. I got involved in tyranno tazonomy in PDW. In the 2000s I sort of went along with the ETRH, but was not happy about it because of its many deficiencies. Then the ETRH was outright refuted when Peter L. presented BM in a poster at SVP LA. A wee tyranno with a hand longer than an adult Tyranno. Not possible it was a juvenile of the latter. Duh. Yet the Trex Mafia kept going. But I also disagreed it was a Nano. So I have been itching as I should to name what is patently a new taxon it at least at the species level (as a Stygi) or higher when the opportunity arose. Which it objectively and ethically has now that it is published albeit dumped into N. lancensis. That’s how it is supposed to work. It’s not name harvesting, it’s normal innovative science.