[dinosaur] Gargantuavis pelvis from Maastrichtian of Romania (not ornithurine bird)

Ben Creisler
[email protected]


A new paper:


Gerald Mayr, Vlad Codrea, Alexandru Solomon, Marian Bordeianu & Thierry
Smith (2019)
A well-preserved pelvis from the Maastrichtian of Romania suggests that the
enigmatic Gargantuavis is neither an ornithurine bird nor an insular
endemic.
Cretaceous Research (advance online publication)
doi: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__doi.org_10.1016_j.cretres.2019.104271&d=DwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=PPzr9-8H3_VPv7hS6V7F8Ah-Zm3FWeN1nEoSHA12YSY&s=Z86-aQJtRdtPNWyd4J0R7Bb0UqRuikMv7r-ALsjEIJY&e= 
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.sciencedirect.com_science_article_pii_S0195667119302289&d=DwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=Ry_mO4IFaUmGof_Yl9MyZgecRCKHn5g4z1CYJgFW9SI&m=PPzr9-8H3_VPv7hS6V7F8Ah-Zm3FWeN1nEoSHA12YSY&s=gxSV9shVMUiu8eGScg_ibw-7R0U4IN3qpNrdwq4Z9Y0&e= 


We describe a well-preserved pelvis from the Maastrichtian Sânpetru
Formation of the Haţeg Basin in Romania. The fossil closely resembles the
pelvis of Gargantuavis philoinos from the Ibero-Armorican Peninsula, but
differs in a smaller size and a few morphological features. It constitutes
the first record of Gargantuavis outside the Ibero-Armorican Island and is
more complete than any of the previously known Gargantuavis pelves. The new
fossil allows the recognition of characteristics previously unknown for
Gargantuavis. These include the presence of large supratrochanteric
processes, the absence of a widened midsection of the synsacrum (which
indicates the absence of a glycogen body), and the absence of fusion
between the pelvic bones at the level of the acetabulum. The latter two
features suggest that Gargantuavis is not closely related to the Ornithurae
and the taxon may even fall outside the Ornithothoraces, the clade
including Enantiornithes and Ornithuromorpha. Recognition of Gargantuavis
in the fauna of the Haţeg Island is of particular significance, because
various theropods have been described from the Upper Cretaceous of Romania.
The Romanian pelvis is of similar-size to Elopteryx nopcsai, which was
described as avian and is based on hindlimb elements, and it also shows
some similarities to the pelvis of the unusual theropod Balaur bondoc. The
new fossil furthermore disproves the hypothesis that the flight
capabilities of Gargantuavis were lost in an insular environment of the
Ibero-Armorican Island, and raises the possibility that Gargantuavis,
Elopteryx, and Balaur belong to a distinctive theropod clade of the Late
Cretaceous European archipelago.

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