Titanosaurian teeth from the South-central Pyrenees (Upper Cretaceous, Catalonia, Spain)

Abstract

In Europe, the sauropod record of the uppermost Cretaceous (Campanian–Maastrichtian) concentrates in Spain, France, and Romania with up to eight titanosaurian species erected and a similar number of tooth morphotypes described. Recently, the lower Maastrichtian locality of Els Nerets from the Tremp Basin (Catalonia, Spain) has yielded the largest tooth sample for a Late Cretaceous titanosaur in the continent. A comprehensive description of 18 teeth from this locality shows that they have conical and slender crowns, pronounced development of mesial and distal carinae, a lemon-shaped cross-section, and a coarse enamel wrinkling defined by closely packed longitudinal crenulations that anastomose apically. The teeth are among the largest, slender-most, and most labiolingually compressed teeth from the region. Despite several morphological similarities with some other few titanosaur species described in other localities of SW Europe, the dental material from Els Nerets cannot be referred to any known European species. Finally, by using a rationale based on tooth morphology and wear facets distribution we propose a dental configuration of the new yet to be described taxon.