Titanosaur osteoderms from the Upper Cretaceous of Lo Hueco (Spain) and their implications on the armor of Laurasian titanosaurs

PLoS One. 2014 Aug 13;9(8):e102488. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0102488. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Titanosaurs are the only sauropod dinosaurs known to bear a dermal armor. Their osteoderms are relatively rare finds, with few more than a hundred specimens recovered worldwide. Also, little is known about their intra-individual, intra-specific or inter-specific variability. The macrovertebrate site of Lo Hueco (Upper Cretaceous; Cuenca, Spain) has yielded several complete specimens of osteoderms, some associated with fairly articulated specimens. They are all variations of the morphotype known as bulb and root. The presence of only this morphotype in Europe, which is considered as the primitive condition among titanosaurs, seems to indicate that the known Upper Cretaceous Laurasian titanosaurs only bore these referred bulb and root osteoderms. An eliptic Fourier analysis on the outline of complete specimens from this morphotype reveals: i) that they truly are part of a morphological cline; and ii) the existence of a consistent correlation between the outline and the morphology of the bulb. Such variation along a cline is more consistent with intra-individual rather than inter-specific variation. The osteoderms associated with a single titanosaur individual from Lo Hueco reinforce this hypothesis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Bone and Bones / anatomy & histology
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Dinosaurs / anatomy & histology*
  • Dinosaurs / classification
  • Fossils*
  • Phylogeny
  • Principal Component Analysis
  • Spain

Grants and funding

Daniel Vidal is recipient of a Postgraduate Grant “Beca de posgrado” from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Research funding was provided by project CGL2012-35199 of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.