New papers:
Soki HATTORI and Yoichi AZUMA (2020)
Spinosaurid teeth from the Lower Cretaceous Kitadani Formation of the Tetori Group, Fukui, Japan.
Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum 19: 1-9 (in English)
https://www.dinosaur.pref.fukui.jp/archive/memoir/memoir019-001.pdfSpinosaurids are large-bodied theropods exhibiting unusually narrow jaws with characteristic conical teeth commonly regarded as an adaptation for piscivorous diet. Despite rare occurrences of their bone materials, spinosaurids are widely known from the Jurassic to Cretaceous of both Gondwana and Laurasia mostly based on the teeth. Among them, Asian spinosaurids have been yielded from the Early Cretaceous deposits of Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, China and Japan. In the present study, 18 conical teeth from the Early Cretaceous Kitadani Formation of the Tetori Group cropping out in the Kitadani Dinosaur Quarry are identified as belonging to Spinosauridae based on the presence of unique morphological characters. These teeth also show some characters unique to Baryonychinae while lacking most denticles as in Spinosaurinae. Two of these teeth exhibit a limited distribution of denticles, which are larger than the minute denticles characteristic to Baryonychinae. Such an intermediate condition probably indicates that the spinosaurid from which these teeth were potentially derived represents a taxon closely related to the common ancestor of Baryonychinae and Spinosaurinae in the Early Cretaceous of East Asia. Therefore, further excavation at the Kitadani Dinosaur Quarry will provide important information for understanding spinosaurid evolutionary history.
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Yusuke SAKAI, Makoto MANABE, Ryoko MATSUMOTO, Yoshitaka YABUMOTO and Ren HIRAYAMA (2020)
Vertebrate fossils from the Lower Cretaceous Itsuki Formation of the Tetori Group in the Kuzuryu district, Ono City, Fukui Prefecture, central Japan.
Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum 19: 105-112 (in Japanese)
https://www.dinosaur.pref.fukui.jp/archive/memoir/memoir019-105.pdf
This study reports vertebrate fossils including fishes, tritylodontid, lizards, choristoderes and dinosaurs from the Lower Cretaceous Itsuki Formation of the Tetori Group in the Itoshirogawa and Kamihambara areas of the Kuzuryu district, Ono City, Fukui Prefecture, central Japan. These vertebrate fossil localities are located in Taniyamadani in the Itoshirogawa area and Hayashidani in the Kamihambara area.
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