A New Lower Cretaceous Vertebrate Bonebed Near Ari?o (Teruel, Aragón, Spain); Found and Managed in a Joint Collaboration Between a Mining Company and a Palaeontological Park

摘要

Systematic prospecting in the Oliete Geological Sub-basin (Aragonese Branch of the Iberian Range), specifically at an open-pit mine in the Escucha Formation (Lower Cretaceous) in Ari?o (Teruel, Spain), has revealed a fossiliferous layer with abundant vertebrate and other early Albian fossils. The fossiliferous stratigraphic level coincides with the floor of the mining operations, i.e. the bonebed is just below the lowest layer of coal mined for industrial purposes. Coal mining in this area of Teruel province has occurred for over a century and intense mining activity is at the present time a major economic force in the region. The new discoveries at this Mesozoic vertebrate locality presented in this paper document the most important Albian dinosaur site identified in Europe. This important discovery is a direct result of mining activity, without which these important data would have remained buried hundreds of metres underground. These discoveries below the coal seams at Ari?o fill out the Lower Cretaceous terrestrial record of Europe and expand upon the palaeogeographic context by which Europe may be compared against correlative dinosaur faunas in North America, Asia and North Africa.