III Jornadas Internacionales sobre Paleontología de Dinosaurios y su Entorno Salas de los Infantes, Burgos An Overview of Titanosaur Evolution and Phylogeny Una revisión de la evolución y fi logenia de los Titanosaurios

• Main Author: J. A. Wilson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Giganteus; Salas; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.507.6544; http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wilsonja/JAW/Publications_files/Wilson2006b.pdf

Titanosaurus was named in 1877 for two caudal vertebrae and an isolated femur from Cretaceous rocks of central India. Titanosauridae was coined soon afterwards to encompass numerous taxa, despite their often tenuous associations and limited morphological overlap. Long recognized as wastebasket taxa, “Titanosaurus indicus”, “Ti-tanosauridae ” and coordinated rank-taxa are now considered invalid, but the unranked taxon Titanosauria remains valid. Titanosauria currentles includes 40+ species and fi rst appeared during the Middle Jurassic in the form of “wide-gauge ” trackways. Titanosaur body fossils do not appear until the Late Jurassic, but they are inferred to have occupied nearly all continental landmasses during the Early Cretaceous. Titanosaurs are the predominant or exclusi-ve sauropods during the Late Cretaceous and represent a key clade for investigation of survivorship patterns and the effects of major tectonic rearrangements on dinosaur evolution. Titanosauria includes several large-bodied species (e.g., Antarctosaurus giganteus, Argyrosaurus superbus, Argentinosaurus huinculensis), as well as species that are diminutive by sauropod standards (e.g., Saltasaurus loricatus, Neuquensaurus australis). Evaluation of previous phylogenetic analyses of Titanosauria provides insight into the structure of the character data thus far generated and a starting point for future studies. Where comparable, analyses agree on several topolo-gical points, including (1) the basal position of Andesaurus and Malawisaurus and (2) the derived position of Sal-