The biota of the Upper Cretaceous site of “Lo Hueco” (Cuenca, Spain)

Abstract

The Late Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian) fossil site of Lo Hueco was recently discovered close to the village of Fuentes (Cuenca, Spain) during the cutting of a little hill for installation of the railway of the Madrid-Levante high-speed train. To date, it has yielded a rich collection of well-preserved Cretaceous macrofossils, including plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. The recovered fossil assemblage is mainly composed of plants, molluscs (bivalves and gastropods), actinopterygians and teleosteans fishes, amphibians, panpleurodiran (bothremydids) and pancryptodiran turtles, squamate lizards, eusuchian crocodyliforms, rhabdodontid ornithopods, theropods (mainly dromaeosaurids), and titanosaur sauropods. This assemblage was deposited in a near-coast continental muddy floodplain crossed by distributary sandy channels, exposed intermittently to brackish or marine and freshwater flooding as well as to partial or total desiccation events.

The Molí del Baró-1 site, a diverse fossil assemblage from the uppermost Maastrichtian of the southern Pyrenees (north-eastern Iberia)

“…The general morphology and the shape of the denticles suggest affinity to teeth assigned to Velociraptorinae and previously reported in the Cretaceous of Spain (e.g. L opez- Martínez et al, 2001;Canudo and Ruíz-Omeñaca, 2003;Barroso-Barcenilla et al, 2009;Ortega et al, 2015). Also, MCD5579 resembles velociraptorine teeth reported from the Maastrichtian of Romania (Grigorescu et al, 1999).…”

“…Several upper Campanianelower Maastrichtian localities from southern France interpreted as fluvial environments share faunal elements with Laño (e.g. lepisosteids, chelonians, ankylosaurs and rhabdodontids) that are not present in Molí del Bar o-1 (Table 2, Chanthasit, 2010;Ortega et al, 2015).…”

Contribution to knowledge of the last dinosaur footprints in Europe. Persistence of ornithopods in the upper Maastrichtian of SE Spain

“…The diversity of herbivorous dinosaurs is higher during the Campanian-early Maastrichtian interval, with a fauna of titanosaurid sauropods, theropods, ankylosaurs (ankylosaurids, nodosaurids), hadrosaurids (hadrosaurines and lambeosaurines) and rhabdodontids. During the late Maastrichtian, however, the fauna became reduced to titanosaur sauropods, theropods, and hadrosaurines and lambeosaurines (e.g., Pereda Suberbiola, 1999;Canudo et al, 2005;Company et al, 2007e9;Súñer et al, 2008;PeredaSuberbiola et al, 2009PeredaSuberbiola et al, , 2015Cruzado Caballero et al, 2010Pu ertolas et al, 2012;Ortega et al, 2015) In the late Maastrichtian, the only ornithopod dinosaurs are hadrosaurids (including primitive and evolved forms) and, among these, the lambeosaurine seem to have been dominant, at least in the Pyrenees (Riera, 2010).…”

“…-In Western Europe, however, no fossil remains of ceratopsia have been reported, and the only skeletal remains of quadrupedal dinosaurs reported in the latest Cretaceous of the Iberian Peninsula are titanosaur sauropods and nodosaurid ankylosaurs (Canudo et al, 2005;Ortega et al, 2015). -The DIS-1 ichnites cannot be attributed to quadrupedal ornithischia (Cerapoda and Tyreophora not Stegosauria) due to the elongated shape of the large footprints, the equidimensional shape of the small ones, and the lack of any impression of digits…”

Dinosaur Palaeontology and their Environment

“…Ortega et al (2015) presents the recently discovered Konzentrat-Lagerstatt of Lo Hueco, located near the village of Fuentes (Cuenca, Iberian Range). The site has yielded a rich collection of fossils, mainly macrofossils of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates.…”