Patagopelta, a new South American ankylosaur.

[Dynomikegojira]

Patagopelta cristata is a small bodied ankylosaur from the Allen Formation but the exciting thing about it is that it is actually a nodosaurid rather than panankylosaur with is closest relatives being known from North America showing that hadrosaurs weren't the only North American dinosaurs to migrate to South America which opens up a lot of possibilities maybe a South American ceratopsian isn't far behind.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14772019.2022.2137441?journalCode=tjsp20

[Pliosaurking]

Man it's been a good few years for discovering ankylosaurs!

[Halichoeres]

If the Antilles weren't so eroded maybe we'd find some of these guys there too, they might have served as a fleeting land bridge before they migrated to their current position.

[Newt]

@Halichoeres - there seem to be pretty extensive fossiliferous Late Cretaceous marine strata in Jamaica and Cuba at least, and ankylosaurs are notorious for drifting out to sea, so there is a chance.

So, if the Late Cretaceous had its own version of the Great American Biotic Interchange, did any South American taxa besides Alamosaurus make it to North America? Are there other titanosaurs, abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, megaraptorans, unenlagiines, or maybe late-surviving rebacchisaurs waiting to be found in North American sediments? Perhaps in the under-explored Late Cretaceous strata of Mexico?

A fellow can dream...

[Leyster]

@Newt some analyses found Dakotaraptor to be an Unelagine.

[Newt]

L @Leyster - I did not know that, thanks for the info!

[VD231991]

Man it's been a good few years for discovering ankylosaurs!

The remains of Patagopelta were unearthed in the 1990s and first described in detail by Salgado and Coria (1996) as well as Coria and Salgado (1996). Recently discovered specimens allowed from the nodosaurid material from Patagonia to be given a new genus and species name.

Coria, R. A., and Salgado, L. 2001. South American ankylosaurs. Pp. 159–168 in K. Carpenter (ed.) The armored dinosaurs. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

Salgado, L., and Coria, R. A., 1996. First evidence of an ankylosaur (Dinosauria, Ornithischia) in South America. Ameghiniana 33(4), 367–371.

[Pliosaurking]

Man it's been a good few years for discovering ankylosaurs!

The remains of Patagopelta were unearthed in the 1990s and first described in detail by Salgado and Coria (1996) as well as Coria and Salgado (1996). Recently discovered specimens allowed from the nodosaurid material from Patagonia to be given a new genus and species name.

Coria, R. A., and Salgado, L. 2001. South American ankylosaurs. Pp. 159–168 in K. Carpenter (ed.) The armored dinosaurs. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

Salgado, L., and Coria, R. A., 1996. First evidence of an ankylosaur (Dinosauria, Ornithischia) in South America. Ameghiniana 33(4), 367–371.

I apologize for my ignorance. I should have said it's been a good few years to be an ankylosaur fan.

[Prehistory Resurrection]

Video credit: E.D.G.E Youtube Channel

[VD231991]

@Halichoeres - there seem to be pretty extensive fossiliferous Late Cretaceous marine strata in Jamaica and Cuba at least, and ankylosaurs are notorious for drifting out to sea, so there is a chance.

So, if the Late Cretaceous had its own version of the Great American Biotic Interchange, did any South American taxa besides Alamosaurus make it to North America? Are there other titanosaurs, abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, megaraptorans, unenlagiines, or maybe late-surviving rebacchisaurs waiting to be found in North American sediments? Perhaps in the under-explored Late Cretaceous strata of Mexico?

A fellow can dream...

@Halichoeres - there seem to be pretty extensive fossiliferous Late Cretaceous marine strata in Jamaica and Cuba at least, and ankylosaurs are notorious for drifting out to sea, so there is a chance.

So, if the Late Cretaceous had its own version of the Great American Biotic Interchange, did any South American taxa besides Alamosaurus make it to North America? Are there other titanosaurs, abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, megaraptorans, unenlagiines, or maybe late-surviving rebacchisaurs waiting to be found in North American sediments? Perhaps in the under-explored Late Cretaceous strata of Mexico?

A fellow can dream...

Rebbachisaurids died out during the Cenomanian-Turonian. The cladistic analysis of the dwarf titanosaur Ibirania by Navarro et al. (2022) finds Alamosaurus and the specimen BIBE 45854 from Texas in disparate cladistic positions within derived Titanosauria as sister to South American taxa, lending support to the suggestion raised by Tykoski and Fiorillo (2017) that Alamosaurus immigrated to Laramidia from South America (the occurrence of the titanosaur Yamanasaurus in Ecuador potentially could indicate that some saltasaurids crossed Central America into Mexico and the American Southwest from South America during the Campanian-Maastrichtian). Tyrannosauroids replaced allosauroids as the dominant  giant theropods of North America by the Turonian-Coniacian, given that the megaraptoran Siats lived during the Cenomanian in Utah.   

Apesteguía, S., J. E. Soto Luzuriaga, P. A. Gallina, J. Tamay Granda, and G. A. Guamán Jaramillo. 2020. The first dinosaur remains from the Cretaceous of Ecuador. Cretaceous Research 108:104345. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2019.104345.

Navarro, B.A., Ghilardi, A.M., Aureliano, T., Díaz, V.D., Bandeira, K.L.N., Cattaruzzi, A.G. S., Iori, F.V., Martine, A.M., Carvalho, A.B., Anelli, L.E., Fernandes, M.A., and Zaher, H., 2022. A New Nanoid Titanosaur (Dinosauria: Sauropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of Brazil. Ameghiniana 59 (5): 317–354. doi:10.5710/AMGH.25.08.2022.3477.

Tykoski, R.S. and Fiorillo, A.R. 2017. An articulated cervical series of Alamosaurus sanjuanensis Gilmore, 1922 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from Texas: new perspective on the relationships of North America's last giant sauropod. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 15(5):339-364.