THE PALEONTOLOGY AREA OF THE FUNDACION AZARA EL AREA DE PALEONTOLOGIA DE LA FUNDACION AZARA

APESTEGUIA, SEBASTIAN; GALLINA, PABLO ARIEL; MUZZOPAPPA, PAULA

Publicacion Electronica de la Asociacion Paleontologica Argentina

Asociacion Paleontologica Argentina

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2022 vol. 22 p. 208 - 225

The Paleontology Area at the Fundacion de Historia Natural Felix de Azara is stablished within the Universidad Maimonides. In the last 17 years it has established itself solidly in scientific publications, colleagues´ meetings, and the media. It contributed with more than 10 new paleoherpetological localities, some as important as the Paleontological Area of La Buitrera, La Bonita, La Escondida, El Pueblito, and Violante´s field, all in the Rio Negro Province, and Bajada Colorada in the Neuquen Province. Overseas, it contributed with the new ichnological localities of Tunasniyoj and Ruditayoj (Bolivia) and exploring the Yamana locality (Ecuador) for the first time. Simultaneously, nearly 50 novel paleoherpetological species and perspectives were provided. Among these, the existence of snakes 70 million years older than the oldest known, the relationship between Jurassic sphenodonts of the south of the Pangean desert, South American dinosaurs faunal successions, the presence of spikes and squared jaws among titanosaurs, and the temporal coincidence of the extinction of carcharodontosaurid theropods and rebbachisaurid sauropods. Concerning human resources, nearly 10 doctoral thesis and other undergraduate theses were conducted based on our own research topics, forming a group of researchers distributed throughout the country today. Finally, regarding outreach activities, fiction series and informative programs were carried out and a dozen books were published, in addition to having started and/or resumed serial publications on natural science topics.