Grupo de Ecología Animal, Centro de Investigacion Mariña, Universidade de Vigo, 36310, Vigo, Spain.
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, 60605, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Dec 2;11(1):23295. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-02490-x.
During the latest Cretaceous, the European Archipelago was characterized by highly fragmented landmasses hosting putative dwarfed, insular dinosaurs, claimed as fossil evidence of the "island rule". The Villaggio del Pescatore quarry (north-eastern Italy) stands as the most informative locality within the palaeo-Mediterranean region and represents the first, multi-individual Konservat-Lagerstätte type dinosaur-bearing locality in Italy. The site is here critically re-evaluated as early Campanian in age, thus preceding the final fragmentation stages of the European Archipelago, including all other European localities preserving hypothesized dwarfed taxa. New skeletal remains allowed osteohistological analyses on the hadrosauroid Tethyshadros insularis indicating subadult features in the type specimen whereas a second, herein newly described, larger individual is likely somatically mature. A phylogenetic comparative framework places the body-size of T. insularis in range with other non-hadrosaurid Eurasian hadrosauroids, rejecting any significant evolutionary trend towards miniaturisation in this clade, confuting its 'pygmy' status, and providing unmatched data to infer environmentally-driven body-size trends in Mesozoic dinosaurs.
在最近的白垩纪期间，欧洲群岛的特点是高度破碎的陆地，拥有所谓的矮小、岛屿恐龙，这些恐龙被认为是“岛屿法则”的化石证据。Villaggio del Pescatore 采石场（意大利东北部）是古地中海地区最具信息性的地点，也是意大利第一个具有多具保存完好恐龙化石的 Konservat-Lagerstätte 类型的地点。该地点的年龄被重新评估为早坎潘期，因此早于欧洲群岛的最后分裂阶段，包括保存假设矮小分类群的所有其他欧洲地点。新的骨骼遗骸允许对鸭嘴龙类 Tethyshadros insularis 的骨组织学进行分析，表明正型标本具有亚成体特征，而第二个在此处新描述的较大个体可能是身体成熟的。一个系统发育比较框架将 T. insularis 的体型置于其他非鸭嘴龙类欧亚大陆鸭嘴龙类的范围内，否定了这个分支向小型化进化的任何显著趋势，驳斥了它的“矮小”地位，并提供了无与伦比的数据来推断中生代恐龙中受环境驱动的体型趋势。
