New dinosaur remains from the Quiricó Formation, Sanfranciscana Basin (Lower Cretaceous), Southwestern Brazil

Abstract

The vertebrate fossil record from the Quiricó Formation, Sanfranciscana Basin (Lower Cretaceous), is scarce, but the remains yet found are of great importance for the understanding of the paleobiogeographic and biogeographic processes that took place during the initial stages that led to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. In this work, new occurrences of sauropod dinosaur bones and theropod teeth from the Barremian–Aptian Quiricó Formation, collected in Campo Azul and Olhos D'Água, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, are described. The fossils comprise isolated bones of sauropod dinosaurs, such as fragments of sauropod vertebrae, and isolated theropod teeth, both preserved in lacustrine siltstones and associated sandstones. The anatomical features of the sauropod bones suggest that they can be assigned to Rebbachisauridae and the morphological analysis of the isolated theropod teeth placed them within Abelisauridae and Carcharodontosauridae. This suggests that during the Early Cretaceous, the dinosaurian fauna from the southeastern Brazil was more closely related to African faunas than to other South-American ones.