Ben Creisler
A new book chapter:
Jihed Dridi (2019)Â
First Titanosauriform Teeth from the Early Cretaceous of Tunisia.Â
In: Boughdiri M., BÃdenas B., Selden P., Jaillard E., Bengtson P., Granier B. (eds) Paleobiodiversity and Tectono-Sedimentary Records in the Mediterranean Tethys and Related Eastern Areas: 45-47
The fossil record of titanosauriform dinosaurs from southern Tunisia is extremely poor. It mainly consists of incomplete specimens that were described from Early Cretaceous fluvial to foreshore deposits of the Tataouine Basin. In the present contribution, I describe new teeth from the Chenini Member in the North of the governorate of Tataouine. The combination of the morphological characters shared by the crowns supports an attribution to titanosauriforms. Although there is no evidence for their autochthony, due to the high energy of the depositional environment, these specimens provide new and valuable information on the dental morphology of the North African titanosauriforms. They confirm their wide palaeo-geographic distribution and at the same time support previous hypotheses about a sporadically connected routes for sauropods between Africa and Europe at the end of the Early Cretaceous.