Late Jurassic theropod dinosaur bones from the Langenberg Quarry (Lower Saxony, Germany) provide evidence for several theropod lineages in the central European archipelago.

Serjoscha W Evers,Oliver Wings

doi:10.7717/peerj.8437

Abstract

Marine limestones and marls in the Langenberg Quarry provide unique insights into a Late Jurassic island ecosystem in central Europe. The beds yield a varied assemblage of terrestrial vertebrates including extremely rare bones of theropod from theropod dinosaurs, which we describe here for the first time. All of the theropod bones belong to relatively small individuals but represent a wide taxonomic range. The material comprises an allosauroid small pedal ungual and pedal phalanx, a ceratosaurian anterior chevron, a left fibula of a megalosauroid, and a distal caudal vertebra of a tetanuran. Additionally, a small pedal phalanx III-1 and the proximal part of a small right fibula can be assigned to indeterminate theropods. The ontogenetic stages of the material are currently unknown, although the assignment of some of the bones to juvenile individuals is plausible. The finds confirm the presence of several taxa of theropod dinosaurs in the archipelago and add to our growing understanding of theropod diversity and evolution during the Late Jurassic of Europe.

Highlights

Late Jurassic terrestrial sediments have seen a long history of fossil exploration (e.g., Close et al, 2018; Tennant, Chiarenza & Baron, 2018), which led to the discovery of an amazingly high number of dinosaur bearing formations (e.g., McAllister Rees et al, 2004)
Despite the regional differences in faunal composition between different German basins, and the Late Jurassic theropod fauna of Germany remains patchy, it is clear that all major groups of theropods that lived during the Late Jurassic were present in Germany
We present new occurrences of theropod dinosaurs from the Late Jurassic Langenberg Quarry of Northern Germany

Summary

Introduction

Late Jurassic terrestrial sediments have seen a long history of fossil exploration (e.g., Close et al, 2018; Tennant, Chiarenza & Baron, 2018), which led to the discovery of an amazingly high number of dinosaur bearing formations (e.g., McAllister Rees et al, 2004). Most of Northern Germany was submerged during the Late Jurassic, resulting in an almost exclusively marine fossil record (Ziegler, 1990). A very rare exception is the Langenberg Quarry at the northern rim of the Harz Mountains where a variety of terrestrial vertebrates have been washed into the marine depositional environment from a nearby island Late Jurassic theropod dinosaur bones from the Langenberg Quarry (Lower Saxony, Germany) provide evidence for several theropod lineages in the central European archipelago.

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