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Sauropod teeth from Upper Jurassic of Portugal
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Ben Creisler
Jan 31, 2025, 10:17:13 AMJan 31
to DinosaurMa...@googlegroups.com
Ben Creisler
A new paper:
André Saleiro & Emanuel Tschopp (2025)
New sauropod teeth from the Upper Jurassic of Portugal and their implications for sauropod dental evolution
Papers in Palaeontology 11(1): e70001
doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.70001
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spp2.70001
The Upper Jurassic of Portugal is well known for its dinosaurian fauna, which includes five sauropod species. Although only one of these species preserves associated dental material, isolated sauropod teeth are commonly found in the Upper Jurassic units of Portugal. The morphological diversity of Portuguese sauropod teeth has already been described and attributed to four dental morphotypes. Here, we report an additional 24 heart-shaped teeth, 9 spatulate teeth, 16 compressed chisel-shaped teeth and 10 pencil-shaped teeth of the hitherto unstudied collection of Museu da Lourinhã. All four morphotypes are attributed to sauropod clades known from the Portuguese Upper Jurassic fossil record, based on morphology and tooth slenderness. Although statistical tests show a clear relation between a widely used Slenderness Index (SI) and taxonomy, morphology proves to be necessary to correctly interpret any usage of the SI as a taxonomic tool. As such, when it comes to the Upper Jurassic Portuguese tooth record, we attribute the heart-shaped teeth to Turiasauria, spatulate teeth to Camarasauridae, compressed chisel-shaped teeth to Titanosauriformes indet., and pencil-shaped teeth to Flagellicaudata. A reassessment of sauropod dental evolution shows a general trend of increasing tooth slenderness in all studied taxonomic groups, and a disappearance of broad-crowned taxa with well developed tooth-to-tooth occlusion by the end of the Early Cretaceous. We suggest that this may be correlated with the evolution of dental batteries in ornithischians, which were more efficient in oral food processing.
New sauropod teeth from the Upper Jurassic of Portugal and their implications for sauropod dental evolution
Papers in Palaeontology 11(1): e70001
doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.70001
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spp2.70001
The Upper Jurassic of Portugal is well known for its dinosaurian fauna, which includes five sauropod species. Although only one of these species preserves associated dental material, isolated sauropod teeth are commonly found in the Upper Jurassic units of Portugal. The morphological diversity of Portuguese sauropod teeth has already been described and attributed to four dental morphotypes. Here, we report an additional 24 heart-shaped teeth, 9 spatulate teeth, 16 compressed chisel-shaped teeth and 10 pencil-shaped teeth of the hitherto unstudied collection of Museu da Lourinhã. All four morphotypes are attributed to sauropod clades known from the Portuguese Upper Jurassic fossil record, based on morphology and tooth slenderness. Although statistical tests show a clear relation between a widely used Slenderness Index (SI) and taxonomy, morphology proves to be necessary to correctly interpret any usage of the SI as a taxonomic tool. As such, when it comes to the Upper Jurassic Portuguese tooth record, we attribute the heart-shaped teeth to Turiasauria, spatulate teeth to Camarasauridae, compressed chisel-shaped teeth to Titanosauriformes indet., and pencil-shaped teeth to Flagellicaudata. A reassessment of sauropod dental evolution shows a general trend of increasing tooth slenderness in all studied taxonomic groups, and a disappearance of broad-crowned taxa with well developed tooth-to-tooth occlusion by the end of the Early Cretaceous. We suggest that this may be correlated with the evolution of dental batteries in ornithischians, which were more efficient in oral food processing.
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