From: Ben Creisler
bcreisler@gmail.com
A new advance online paper in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica :
Bárbara Sánchez-Hernández and Michael J. Benton (2012)
Filling the ceratosaur gap: A new ceratosaurian theropod from the
Early Cretaceous of Spain.
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica (in press)
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4202/app.2011.0144
http://app.pan.pl/article/item/app20110144.html
Ceratosaurian theropods evolved in two bursts, first in the Middle and
Late Jurassic and then in the Late Cretaceous, leaving a 20 Myr gap in
the Early Cretaceous during which remains are rare. We describe here a
new ceratosaurian theropod, Camarillasaurus cirugedae, from fluvial
deposits of the Camarillas Formation (lower Barremian, Lower
Cretaceous) of Camarillas, Teruel Province, NE Spain. The new theropod
is represented by a collection of associated bones, including a tooth,
a possible cervical vertebra, two sternal plates, the proximal part of
a right tibia, a broken right scapulocoracoid, the incomplete sacrum,
five caudal vertebrae, an isolated caudal neural arch, a chevron, an
almost complete presacral rib and some fragments of vertebrae, ribs,
and other elements. Camarillasaurus is differentiated from other
theropods by the extreme depth of the tibia proximal end, and a deep
longitudinal groove on the tibia. The new dinosaur is a ceratosaur,
phylogenetically close to the base of the clade, and perhaps more
derived than the Chinese basal ceratosaur Limusaurus. The new taxon is
significant in the evolution of the ceratosaurian dinosaurs, being
placed temporally between its more common Jurassic and middle-Upper
Cretaceous relatives, and it is one of only a few from Laurasia.