TY - JOUR
T1 - Dinosaurs and the island rule
T2 - The dwarfed dinosaurs from Haţeg Island
AU - Benton, Michael J.
AU - Csiki, Zoltan
AU - Grigorescu, Dan
AU - Redelstorff, Ragna
AU - Sander, P. Martin
AU - Stein, Koen
AU - Weishampel, David B.
N1 - Funding Information:
MJB, ZCS, and DG thank the Royal Society and the University of Bristol for funding visits between Romania and the UK, since 1993. Also thanked are the CNCSIS (National University Research Council) grants to DG ( 1677A/2007 ) and ZCS ( 1930/2008 ), as well as the Synthesys Grant GB-TAF 3417-2007 to ZC, for supporting field and museum research. MS and KS thank the German Research Foundation (DFG) for financial support. MS and KS also thank Georg Oleschinski and Olaf Dülfer (University of Bonn) for technical support of photography and thin section preparation, respectively. DBW thanks the National Science Foundation , the National Geographic Society , the Dinosaur Society , the Jurassic Foundation , and the Paleontological Society International Research Program (the latter two awarded to Coralia-Maria Jianu, who is also thanked for her contributions to this paper) for funds supporting field and museum research since 1987. We are enormously grateful to Cristiana Andreani for redrafting Figs. 2 and 3 for this paper, and to David Dilkes for data on Maiasaura. We thank Paul Upchurch and Octávio Mateus for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of the MS.
PY - 2010/7
Y1 - 2010/7
N2 - Islands are fascinating natural laboratories of evolution. One much debated theme among evolutionary ecologists is whether there is an 'island rule', the observation that large animals tend to become smaller and small animals larger. Franz Nopcsa was the first, in 1914, to suggest that the latest Cretaceous dinosaurs from Haţeg, Romania were an island fauna, based on its low diversity and apparently unbalanced composition, and the basal position ("primitiveness") of many of the included taxa within their respective clades. In turn, the small size of the taxa compared to their relatives from other landmasses in conjunction with the proposed island setting were used to support the presence of the island rule and size reduction (dwarfing; nanism) among the Haţeg dinosaurs. In Nopcsa's day, palaeontologists had seen the same phenomenon many times in the Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene mammals of the Mediterranean islands. Although often quoted as a key Mesozoic example of the island rule, the supposedly dwarfed Haţeg dinosaurs have never been investigated thoroughly. Here we review a wealth of new data, from tectonics and regional geology to limb proportions and dinosaur bone histology, which support Nopcsa's original claim of insularity of the Haţeg fauna. Current evolutionary studies confirm that the island rule applies in many, if not all, modern cases, as well as to the Mediterranean island mammals. Geological evidence confirms that Haţeg was probably an island in the Late Cretaceous, and phylogenetic, ecological, and bone histological evidence shows that at least two of the Haţeg dinosaurs, the sauropod Magyarosaurus and the ornithopod Telmatosaurus, as well as possibly the ornithopod Zalmoxes, were dwarfs by progenesis, a form of paedomorphosis.
AB - Islands are fascinating natural laboratories of evolution. One much debated theme among evolutionary ecologists is whether there is an 'island rule', the observation that large animals tend to become smaller and small animals larger. Franz Nopcsa was the first, in 1914, to suggest that the latest Cretaceous dinosaurs from Haţeg, Romania were an island fauna, based on its low diversity and apparently unbalanced composition, and the basal position ("primitiveness") of many of the included taxa within their respective clades. In turn, the small size of the taxa compared to their relatives from other landmasses in conjunction with the proposed island setting were used to support the presence of the island rule and size reduction (dwarfing; nanism) among the Haţeg dinosaurs. In Nopcsa's day, palaeontologists had seen the same phenomenon many times in the Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene mammals of the Mediterranean islands. Although often quoted as a key Mesozoic example of the island rule, the supposedly dwarfed Haţeg dinosaurs have never been investigated thoroughly. Here we review a wealth of new data, from tectonics and regional geology to limb proportions and dinosaur bone histology, which support Nopcsa's original claim of insularity of the Haţeg fauna. Current evolutionary studies confirm that the island rule applies in many, if not all, modern cases, as well as to the Mediterranean island mammals. Geological evidence confirms that Haţeg was probably an island in the Late Cretaceous, and phylogenetic, ecological, and bone histological evidence shows that at least two of the Haţeg dinosaurs, the sauropod Magyarosaurus and the ornithopod Telmatosaurus, as well as possibly the ornithopod Zalmoxes, were dwarfs by progenesis, a form of paedomorphosis.
KW - Cretaceous
KW - Dinosaurs
KW - Haţeg
KW - Island dwarfing
KW - Island rule
KW - Maastrichtian
KW - Nanism
KW - Romania
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U2 - 10.1016/j.palaeo.2010.01.026
DO - 10.1016/j.palaeo.2010.01.026
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77954931817
SN - 0031-0182
VL - 293
SP - 438
EP - 454
JO - Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
JF - Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
IS - 3-4
ER -