GALVESAURUS-GALVEOSAURUS

[jigruiz@unizar.es]

Dear Dinolist members:

I forward you a message from Dr. José Ignacio CANUDO from the 
University of Zaragoza

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GALVESAURUS-GALVEOSAURUS

We have had the opportunity to read the paper that has just been 
published in the journal Zootaxa on the validity of the sauropod taxa 
Galvesaurus and ?Galveosaurus?, which has given rise to certain 
comments in the Dinolist (http://dml.cmnh.org/2006May/msg00192.html). 
We believe it fitting that Dinolist´s readers should be informed of 
certain previously unmentioned factors relating to professional ethics 
regarding this sauropod from Cuesta Lonsal site, Galve (Teruel), which 
we have been preparing and studying since 1993 and on which we have 
published numerous papers through to 2005, as we explain below. The 
research team Aragosaurus (http://www.aragosaurus.com/) of which we 
form a part has a long history in the study of this sauropod. We first 
visited the site in 1987, commissioned by the Chair of Palaeontology at 
Zaragoza University and the Government of Aragon. The local amateur 
José María Herrero had initially excavated the site. Once all the 
bureaucratic problems had been resolved, we carried out the first 
paleontological dig at Cuesta Lonsal site in 1993, continuing this work 
intermittently through to 2002, which made it possible for us to 
recover more than fifty remains belonging to the sauropod. Two doctoral 
theses were begun in the Science Faculty at Zaragoza University. One of 
these was not formally defended, but gave rise to a first publication 
in 1994. In 1997 José Luis Barco started his PhD on the sauropod from 
Cuesta Lonsal. His study focuses both on the fossils excavated by José 
María Herrero and on those we recovered ourselves, and of course has 
all the requisite bureaucratic permissions. From 1993 through to the 
present day this material has been in preparation by our team at 
Zaragoza University with the financial support of the Government of 
Aragon and research projects funded by the Ministry for Science and 
Technology from Spain. More than 2000 hours of work have so far been 
spent on the preparation, and this work is still going on. Over these 
years we have published in various congresses and scientific journals 
partial studies on the new sauropod from Cuesta Lonsal, to which we had 
not given a formal name because the material was in preparation. 
Following the defence of José Luis Barco?s master thesis (Barco 2004, 
2005, Treballs del Museu de Geologia de Barcelona) we defined the new 
species Galvesaurus herreroi, a denomination we had proposed and been 
informally using since 1999 as homage to its discoverer Herrero and to 
the village where it was found. The full information is 
http://www.aragosaurus.com/galvesaurus/index.htm

Galve is a village for which dinosaurs are its source of wealth. One of 
its attractions is a small local museum where discoveries are 
displayed. We have published more than 70 scientific papers on 
vertebrates from Galve, and the information generated has thus made it 
possible to foster this educational and tourist project, which we have 
supported from the outset. In this context it is easy to understand our 
disinterested act of transferring any new Cuesta Lonsal material to the 
museum once we had prepared it, so it could be put on display. One of 
the examples is the cervical vertebra that we placed on Galve on March 
of 2005, after the publication of Galvesaurus was accepted ?in press?.

It never occurred to us that anyone might go to the museum, take photos 
and, only based on those photos, most of them of material inside the 
display cabinet (as can be seen on figure 3 of the ?Galveosaurus? work, 
in which the only dorsal vertebra is figurate next to other pieces on 
display, or one of the caudal, were the wood display cabinet, that we 
know well because we have assemble it on 1994, is shown). Our research 
in Cuesta Lonsal is well known in the paleontological community, as 
well as with regional government bodies (who gave all due permissions), 
the academic authorities and the regional and local press (see 
http://www.aragosaurus.com/descarga/newsgalve1.pdf). Moreover ? and 
this is perhaps the most important point, one that university teaching 
and research staff will fully understand ? it forms part of a doctoral 
thesis that is in the process of completion.  It is easy to understand 
that the Cuesta Lonsal sauropod has formed part of our research for 
fifteen years and that one of the results of this research is the 
publication of the new taxon Galvesaurus in July of 2005. We find it 
difficult to understand the lack of ethics shown by the person from the 
University of Bristol who has published in August of 2005 what we are 
investigating as the new taxon ?Galveosaurus.? The Code of Zoological 
Nomenclature has a section that deals with professional ethics, which 
we recommend should be read by those with doubts about the validity of 
Galvesaurus herreroi Barco, Canudo, Cuenca-Bescós & Ruiz-Omeñaca 2005 
over other subsequent proposals. We are afraid that this person will do 
it again with any of the dinosaurs we are studying in Galve, as the 
small ornithopod from Poyales from PhD Thesis of José Ignacio 
Ruiz-Omeñaca (will be defended in September). This dinosaur has been 
cited in different papers, e.g. Ruiz-Omeñaca, J.I. 2001. Dinosaurios 
hipsilofodóntidos (Ornithischia: Ornithopoda) en la Península Ibérica. 
Actas de las I Jornadas internacionales sobre Paleontología de 
Dinosaurios y su entorno. CAS (eds.). Salas de los Infantes, 175-266. 
Almost all the papers from Galve published by our group can be 
downloaded at the section ?publicaciones? of our web page Aragosaurus 
(http://www.aragosaurus.com/)

José Ignacio Canudo
Grupo Aragosaurus (http://www.aragosaurus.com/)
Paleontología. Facultad de Ciencias
Universidad de Zaragoza
Pedro Cerbuna 12. 50009 Zaragoza
jicanudo@unizar.es  jicanudo@aragosaurus.com
34 976 762248