Theropod tooth morphology and wear from Upper Cretaceous Euroope + dinosaur eggs and bones from Hefei Basin, China (free pdfs)

[Ben Creisler]

Ben Creisler

bcre...@gmail.com

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Attila Ősi, Réka Kolláti & András Lajos Nagy (2025)
Morphological and dental wear pattern analysis of Upper Cretaceous theropod teeth from Central Europe
Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments  Article
doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-025-00657-2
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12549-025-00657-2

Theropod teeth have long been known from the Upper Cretaceous of Europe, but the 20 million years long interval spanning the Cenomanian to the Campanian has remained underrepresented in the fossil record and understudied. Recent discoveries from the Turonian and Coniacian of Austria and the Santonian of Hungary fill this gap to some extent. Here we report on a study of 2D morphometry and dental wear of Turonian–Maastrichtian theropod teeth from Central Europe aimed at shedding further light on the phyletic and adaptive diversity of Late Cretaceous theropods in the archipelago of Europe. Our results suggest that the taxa Paraves indet. and Paronychodon were present in the region from the Turonian to the Maastrichtian, while medium-sized tetanuran forms are known only until the early Campanian. The record of some groups, such as troodontid or bird-like forms, is more sporadic and known only from a few sites. Dental wear study indicates that theropod teeth rarely show severe wear exposing dentin, though spalled surfaces are commonly seen on tetanuran teeth. Dental microwear feature and texture analysis of the worn enamel surfaces show a dominance of scratches (82–100%), with somewhat higher complexity in some of the non-serrated forms. The largest tetanuran teeth differ in terms of scratch length, pit size and anizotropy from the small, serrated Paraves indet. 1 teeth, but overlap with those of the extant carnivore-scavenger Varanus komodoensis suggesting large tetanurans resembled V. komodoensis in feeding on large vertebrates.

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WANG Qiang, DONG Zhe, MAO Lei, ZHU Xu-Feng, CHEN Yan-Bin, HUANG Jian-Dong & DING Hai-Dong (2025)
The first discovery of non-avian dinosaur egg and bone fossils in the Hefei Basin  
Vertebrata Palasiatica (advance online publication)
DOI: 10.19615/j.cnki.2096-9899.250618
https://www.vertpala.ac.cn/EN/10.19615/j.cnki.2096-9899.250618


This report is about the first record of non-avian dinosaur eggs in the Hefei Basin, Anhui Province, China. Based on the combination of elongated egg body, linear ridges on the outer surface and two structure layer, the eggs can be referred to Elongatoolithidae. The gradual boundary between the cone and the column layers as well as the relative thin eggshell (less than 1 mm) indicates its affinity within Elongatoolithus. The eggs are identified as Elongatoolithus oosp., as they were severely compressed and experienced erosion on both inner and outer surfaces. The discovery of egg fossil in the Hefei Basin offers evidence for stratum comparison in this region and supplements the diversity of egg fossils in Anhui. Meanwhile, this discovery also enriches the paleogeographic distribution of elongatoolithids.