Abstract
The fossil record of large-bodied, apex carnivorous theropod dinosaurs in Eastern Asia is now among the best understood in the world, thanks to new discoveries and reinterpretations of long-neglected fossils. Asia boasts the most complete record of Middle Jurassic theropods globally, as well as one of the best-studied Late Cretaceous theropod faunas, and new research is helping to fill what was previously a 60-million-year gap in the Early-mid Cretaceous fossil record of large Asian predators. In general, the biogeographic affinities of large-bodied Asian theropods over time were intimately related to physical geography, and progressively more derived theropod clades evolved large body size and occupied the apex predator niche throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous. During the Middle Jurassic, largely endemic clades of basal tetanurans were prevalent in Asia, whereas during the Late Jurassic-mid Cretaceous more derived “intermediate” tetanuran theropods with cosmopolitan affinities occupied the large predator role, including sinraptorids, spinosaurids, and carcharodontosaurians. Finally, during the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous, more derived, bird-like coelurosaurs attained large body size. Foremost among these were the tyrannosaurids, a radiation of northern (Asian and North American) megapredators whose ascent into the apex predator niche was a delayed event restricted to the Campanian-Maastrichtian. As Asia is the focus of intense ongoing dinosaur fieldwork, our understanding of large-bodied theropod evolution will continue to be refined with future discoveries.
Highlights
Long overshadowed by discoveries in North America and Europe, the fossil record of Eastern Asian dinosaurs is among the best documented in the world
It was suggested that birds have some relationship with carnivorous theropod dinosaurs as early as the 19th century (e.g., Huxley, 1868), and subsequently proposed that birds were the extant descendants of theropods (e.g., Ostrom, 1969), the discovery of the Jehol fossils in the mid 1990s provided the final, and most visual, piece of evidence: bona fide theropods with feathers
A companion to our presentation at the 10th Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems Symposium in Teruel, we provide an overview of largebodied theropod evolution during the Mesozoic in Eastern Asia, with a particular emphasis on new specimens and information
Summary
Long overshadowed by discoveries in North America and Europe, the fossil record of Eastern Asian dinosaurs is among the best documented in the world. The feathered theropods of the Jehol Biota are among the best studied carnivorous dinosaurs in the world, but they all represent small-bodied theropods (most are smaller than an average-sized man). Few specimens of large, apex predator theropods are known from Asia, and there are substantial gaps in the fossil record of these carnivores. Fig. 1.-A framework phylogeny (genealogical tree) of theropod dinosaurs, with skull images of the most important groups of large carnivores from Asia. Basal theropods such as Monolophosaurus, belonging to endemic clades, filled the large carnivore niche in the Middle Jurassic, whereas allosauroid sinraptorids and carcharodontosaurians were the apex predators in the Late Jurassic and Early-mid Cretaceous of Asia, respectively. Here, but only medium-to-large-bodied taxa that were likely apex predators, or otherwise occupied a top predator niche
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