GONDWANA DINOSAURS FROM THE JURASSIC OF ANTARCTICA

概要

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Other than fragmentary remains from the Antarctic peninsula region, the only dinosaurs known from Antarctica come from a single Jurassic locality in the Transantarctic Mountains. The bones occur in a tuffaceous siltstone in the Hanson Formation approximately 650km from the Geographic South Pole. The Jurassic assemblage includes a partial skeleton of the crested theropod Cryolophosaurus ellioti, teeth of other scavenging theropods and a tritylodont, postcranial elements of a plateosaurid prosauropod and a single humerus from a dimorphodontid pterosaur. Skull features of Cryolophosaurus suggest that it is a tetanuran theropod related to the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous tetanurans known mainly from northern continents. The postcranial skeleton, however, retains primitive features. An Early Jurassic age for this fauna is established by the overlapping ranges of other plateosaurids, tritylodonts and dimorphodontids. This age makes Cryolophosaurus the oldest known large tetanuran. Taxa from other faunas most similar to the Antarctic forms come mainly from the northern continents, probably because Early Jurassic assemblages are rare in Gondwana.
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