A primitive euhadrosaurian dinosaur from the uppermost Cretaceous of the Ager syncline (southern Pyrenees, Catalonia)

Abstract

New hadrosaurid material is recorded from Fontllonga (Ager syncline, province of Lleida), in the Catalonian Pyrenees, comprising a dentary with part of the dental battery recovered from Late Maastrichtian strata (Tremp Formation), close to the presumed Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. This hadrosaurid is more derived than is Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus from the Haţeg Basin (Romania) , but lacks a number of features that diagnose the clade Hadrosaurinae plus Lambeosaurinae. It is attributed to the Euhadrosauria on the basis of the following synapomorphies: dentary teeth not recurved distally, narrow dentary crowns, and denticles not supported by subsidiary ridges. The phylogenetic relationships of the best-known iguanodontids and hadrosauroids are evaluated using mandibular and dentary tooth characters. On the basis of a cladistic analysis, the family of Hadrosauridae is diagnosed by more than 29 dentary tooth positions, parallel-sided vertical furrows formed by dentary alveoli, and absence of caudal secondary ridges. Within Hadrosauridae, successive sister-groups of Hadrosaurinae plus Lambeosaurinae are the Fontllonga taxon and Telmatosaurus. The clade Hadrosaurinae plus Lambeosaurinae is characterised mainly by a coronoid process inclined rostrally and by the absence of secondary ridges on dentary crowns. The Fontllonga find suggests the diversity of European hadrosaurids at the end of the Cretaceous to have been greater than previously thought. Moreover, the primitive character of European hadrosaurids as compared to western North American and Asian relatives may be explained in terms of geographical isolation during the Late Cretaceous.