A reappraisal of the Cretaceous non-avian dinosaur faunas from Australia and New Zealand: evidence for their Gondwanan affinities

AGNOLIN, FEDERICO; EZCURRA, MARTIN D.; PAIS, DIEGO; SALISBURY, STEVEN

JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC PALAEONTOLOGY

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2010 p. 257 - 300

1477-2019

It has often been assumed that Australasian Cretaceous dinosaur faunas were for the most part endemic, but with someLaurasian affinities. In this regard, some Australasian dinosaurs have been considered Jurassic relicts, while others werethought to represent typical Laurasian forms or endemic taxa. Furthermore, it has been proposed that some dinosaurianlineages, namely oviraptorosaurians, dromaeosaurids, ornithomimosaurians and protoceratopsians, may have originatedin Australia before dispersing to Asia during the Early Cretaceous. Here we provide a detailed review of Cretaceousnon-avian dinosaurs from Australia and New Zealand, and compare them with taxa from other Gondwanan landmasses.Our results challenge the traditional view of Australian dinosaur faunas, with the majority of taxa displaying affinitiesthat are concordant with current palaeobiogeographic models of Gondwanan terrestrial vertebrate faunal distribution. Wereinterpret putative Australian ‘hypsilophodontids’ as basal ornithopods (some of them probably related to South Americanforms), and the recently described protoceratopsians are referred to Genasauria indet. and Ornithopoda indet. AmongTheropoda, the Australian pigmy ‘Allosaurus’ is referred to the typical Gondwanan cladeAbelisauroidea. Similarities are alsoobserved between the enigmatic Australian theropod Rapator, Australovenator and the SouthAmerican carcharodontosaurianMegaraptor. Timimus and putative oviraptorosaurians are referred to Dromaeosauridae. The present revision demonstratesthat Australia’s non-avian Cretaceous dinosaurian faunas were reminiscent of those found in other, roughly contemporaneous,Gondwanan landmasses, and are suggestive of faunal interchange with these regions via Antarctica.