The anatomy and relationships of Eucamerotus foxi (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the Early Cretaceous of England

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1 Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, University of London, London, United Kingdom
2 Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.3247v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Paleontology
Keywords
Dinosaur, Sauropod, Isle of Wight, Eucamerotus foxi, Ornithopsis hulkei, Early Cretaceous, Barremian, Dorsal vertebra
Copyright
© 2017 Campbell et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Campbell A, Upchurch P, Mannion PD. 2017. The anatomy and relationships of Eucamerotus foxi (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the Early Cretaceous of England. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3247v1

Abstract

Eucamerotus foxi is a macronarian sauropod from the Wessex Formation (Early Cretaceous, Barremian) of the Isle of Wight. It is represented by NHMUK R2522, a partial dorsal neural arch, and differs from other known sauropods by the presence of a stout robust prezygoparapophyseal lamina (PRPL) which bifurcates distally. NHMUK R90 are a pair of dorsal vertebrae also from the Wessex Formation which have been designated as paratypes of E. foxi. Both NHMUK R2522 and NHMUK R90 have traditionally been regarded as either basal titanosauriformes or of brachiosaurid affinities. Here, phylogenetic analysis using the Lusotitan Standard Discrete Matrix recovered NHMUK R90 as a non-titanosaurian somphospondylan nested in a clade made up of ((Tastavinsaurus (Chubutisaurus, Angolatitan, NHMUK R90)) though Bremer support for this group was low. Analyses recovered E. foxi as a neosauropod of uncertain affinities with little resolution throughout the tree. NHMUK R90 is recognised as being distinct from E. foxi based on the lack of a robust distally bifurcated PRPL and is likely representative of a new sauropod taxon. E. foxi is here retained as a valid species of basal macronarian.

Author Comment

This is an abstract which has been accepted as a poster for the SVPCA/SPPC 2017 conference.