Ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica
Abstract The body armor of ankylosaurians is a unique morphological feature among dinosaurs. While ankylosaurian body armor has been studied for decades, paleohistological analyses have only started to uncover the details of its function. Yet there has been an overall bias toward sampling ankylosaur...
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Cambridge University Press (CUP)
2023
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2023.4 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0094837323000040 |
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crcambridgeupr:10.1017/pab.2023.4 2024-03-03T08:37:55+00:00 Ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica Brum, Arthur S. Eleutério, Lúcia H. S. Simões, Tiago R. Whitney, Megan R. Souza, Geovane A. Sayão, Juliana M. Kellner, Alexander W. A. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico 2023 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2023.4 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0094837323000040 en eng Cambridge University Press (CUP) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Paleobiology volume 49, issue 4, page 579-600 ISSN 0094-8373 1938-5331 Paleontology General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Ecology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics journal-article 2023 crcambridgeupr https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2023.4 2024-02-08T08:35:11Z Abstract The body armor of ankylosaurians is a unique morphological feature among dinosaurs. While ankylosaurian body armor has been studied for decades, paleohistological analyses have only started to uncover the details of its function. Yet there has been an overall bias toward sampling ankylosaurian remains from the Northern Hemisphere, with limited quantitative studies on the morphological and functional evolution of the osteoderms composing their body armor. Here, we describe new ankylosaurian materials recovered from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica that, in combination with data compiled from the literature, reveal new insights into the evolution of the ankylosaurian body armor. Based on histological microstructure and phylogenetic results, the new Antarctic material can be assigned to Nodosauridae. This group shares the absence/poor development of their osteodermal basal cortex and highly ordered sets of orthogonal structural fibers in the superficial cortex. Our morphospace analyses indicate that large morphological diversity is observed among both nodosaurids and ankylosaurids, but osteoderms became more functionally specialized in late-diverging nodosaurids. Besides acting as effective protection against predation, osteoderms also exhibit highly ordered structural fibers in nodosaurids, enabling a decrease in cortical bone thickness (as in titanosaurs), which could have been co-opted for secondary functions, such as calcium remobilization for physiological balance. The latter may have played a key role in nodosaurid colonization of high-latitude environments, such as Antarctica and the Arctic Circle. Article in Journal/Newspaper Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica Arctic Cambridge University Press Arctic Antarctic Paleobiology 1 22 |
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language |
English |
topic |
Paleontology General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Ecology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics |
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Paleontology General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Ecology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Brum, Arthur S. Eleutério, Lúcia H. S. Simões, Tiago R. Whitney, Megan R. Souza, Geovane A. Sayão, Juliana M. Kellner, Alexander W. A. Ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica |
topic_facet |
Paleontology General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Ecology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics |
description |
Abstract The body armor of ankylosaurians is a unique morphological feature among dinosaurs. While ankylosaurian body armor has been studied for decades, paleohistological analyses have only started to uncover the details of its function. Yet there has been an overall bias toward sampling ankylosaurian remains from the Northern Hemisphere, with limited quantitative studies on the morphological and functional evolution of the osteoderms composing their body armor. Here, we describe new ankylosaurian materials recovered from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica that, in combination with data compiled from the literature, reveal new insights into the evolution of the ankylosaurian body armor. Based on histological microstructure and phylogenetic results, the new Antarctic material can be assigned to Nodosauridae. This group shares the absence/poor development of their osteodermal basal cortex and highly ordered sets of orthogonal structural fibers in the superficial cortex. Our morphospace analyses indicate that large morphological diversity is observed among both nodosaurids and ankylosaurids, but osteoderms became more functionally specialized in late-diverging nodosaurids. Besides acting as effective protection against predation, osteoderms also exhibit highly ordered structural fibers in nodosaurids, enabling a decrease in cortical bone thickness (as in titanosaurs), which could have been co-opted for secondary functions, such as calcium remobilization for physiological balance. The latter may have played a key role in nodosaurid colonization of high-latitude environments, such as Antarctica and the Arctic Circle. |
author2 |
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Brum, Arthur S. Eleutério, Lúcia H. S. Simões, Tiago R. Whitney, Megan R. Souza, Geovane A. Sayão, Juliana M. Kellner, Alexander W. A. |
author_facet |
Brum, Arthur S. Eleutério, Lúcia H. S. Simões, Tiago R. Whitney, Megan R. Souza, Geovane A. Sayão, Juliana M. Kellner, Alexander W. A. |
author_sort |
Brum, Arthur S. |
title |
Ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica |
title_short |
Ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica |
title_full |
Ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica |
title_fullStr |
Ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica |
title_full_unstemmed |
Ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica |
title_sort |
ankylosaurian body armor function and evolution with insights from osteohistology and morphometrics of new specimens from the late cretaceous of antarctica |
publisher |
Cambridge University Press (CUP) |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2023.4 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0094837323000040 |
geographic |
Arctic Antarctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Antarctic |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica Arctic |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctica Arctic |
op_source |
Paleobiology volume 49, issue 4, page 579-600 ISSN 0094-8373 1938-5331 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2023.4 |
container_title |
Paleobiology |
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1 |
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22 |
_version_ |
1792502784660078592 |