Gondwanaland: Gondwanaland:
South America in the Early Cretaceous
From The Dinosaur Collector
Cretaceous South American dinosaurs have been poorly known. Some of the earliest known dinosaurs are from the Late Triassic South America. Part of Gondwanaland, it was dominated in the by abelisaurs like Carnotaurus and sauropods. There is a Northern hemisphere bias to dinosaurs since the best known finds especially for the Cretaceous are from Laurasia. It was long assumed that sauropods declined world wide and were replaced by hadrosaurs and cerotopsians. It may be that North America and Asia were not the norm for the Mesozoic. In the The southern continents sauropods thrived and evolved the duckbills and certopsians never became major components of the fauna of South America, Australia or Africa. It actually looks like Gondwanaland fauna was expanding into North America and Europe when the extinction event closed out the Mesozoic. Argentina in particular has been producing a lot of new dinosaur finds. These have been over shadowed by the spectacular finds in Asia in the public news.
update 11/23/07
Find more Diorama pages
The Early Cretaceous La Amarga Formation in Patagonia runs through the Barremian through the Early Aptian. There is the medium sized, 37 feet long sauropod Amargasaurus (Amarga lizard) had a “frill” or "spikes" running along most of its neck and back. These animals seem be related to the same family as Dicraeosaurus found in Africa in the Jurassic. Diplodocids and titanosaurs filled the medium and giant plant eating roles. Small iguanodonts are present reminiscent of the Late Jurassic dryosaurs. Abelisaurs were the medium size predators. They are though to be relatives of the Jurassic ceratosaurs. The earliest known abelisaurs are known from Jurassic North Africa. Abelisaurs seem to be a group that started in Gondwana and moved into Europe in the Cretaceous. The divergence in dinosaur families seems to have begun in the Jurassic become apparent in the Cretaceous.
The Amargasaurus from Chap Mei , FameMaster 4D and the large and small Battat toy figures.
Abelisaurs are regarded as primitive theropods perhaps related to the Jurassic ceratosaurs. Most are poorly known from scrappy finds in South America, Africa, Europe and India. The also differed from the allosaurids and tyrannosaurids by not having their tails stiffen by rods. They may not have been as maneuverable on land but potentially better swimmers.
Above are some of the knock offs of the Batatt Amargasaurus. Disney's Dinosaur created a lot of of Carnotaurus figures. Above is an articulated figure from KB toys.
Abelisaurs like Carnotaurus are the common middle sized predators in South America, Africa, India and Europe. Early Cretaceous Ligabueino (meaning "Ligabue's little one") was an abelisaurid or Nassau. This was the smallest of all abelisaurs, only 70 cm (2.3 feet) long.
(Use the scroll bar to view all the Diorama) Battat's Amargasaurus and Carnotaurus. Next from Safari the titanosaur Saltasaurus and Carnotaurus. Last the Jasman Carnotaurus and Tamiya hypsilophidont. While it is unlikely these dinosaurs all lived at the same time, currently the range of South American dinosaur figures is limited in variety. I think it reasonable to assume that they would have had similar animals for most of the period.
| Irritator from Brazil is probably a spinosaurid. The teeth indicate a fish diet. It had a slender jaw with nostrils well back from the front of the snout good for fish eating. It was erroneously described as having a large crest. Only the head is known so the size and reconstruction are speculative. | Carnotaurus(Flesh eating bull) also from the Maastrichtian about 27 feet long is most popular and one of the last abelisaurs. | |
 |
 |
|
| Bandai series 3 Irritator. | Disney Carnotaurus and a gray Toys and Things Saltasaurus. The blue sleeping Saltasaurus is a custom figure I made based on the Panosh figure. |
Back to the Mesozoic
Click on the Site B icon to the right for Dioramas organized by period or by manufacturer.