FIRST LATE JURASSIC DINOSAUR BONES FROM CHILE

SALGADO,L.; DE LA CRUZ,R.;SUÁREZ, M.FERNÁNDEZ, M.; GASPARINI,Z.

JOURNAL OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY

SOC VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY

Año: 2008 vol. 28 p. 529 - 534

0272-4634

Skeletal remains of dinosaurs from Chile are rare, unlike the ichnological record, which includes sauropods, theropods, and ornithopods, mostly from the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous . The first record of dinosaur bone in this country—a few remains of a titanosaur sauropod from the Upper Cretaceous of the Fourth (IV) Región—was reported by Casamiquela et al. (1969). Since then, the reported materials have been very scarce: only some titanosaur bones collected in the Upper Cretaceous of the Third (III) Región (Iriarte et al., 1999). Concerning their geographic distribution, most of the Chilean dinosaur remains occur north of 39° S Lat. In this paper, an assemblage of dinosaur bones from the Central Patagonian Cordillera at Aysén (southern Chile; ca. 46° S.), south of Lago General Carrera, is reported. Previous records of Jurassic dinosaurs of Chile consisted of footprints. Thus, the remains from southern Chile are the first undoubted Jurassic dinosaurs found in this country, and the first significant remains of carnivorous dinosaurs, which previously were known only from isolated teeth found in the Upper Cretaceous Viñita Formation at the Monumento Natural Pichasca, in the Fourth (IV) Región .