Dinossauros saurópodes da Bacia Bauru (cretáceo), Centro-Sul do Brasil: uma revisão bibliográfica

Abstract

The Bauru Basin is an inland basin of Cretaceous age, located in Southeastern Brazil, which has great paleontological importance due to the abundant vertebrate fossils, especially dinosaurs. Sauropod dinosaur fossils are especially abundant in its strata, however, most of the works published so far on these records were focused on description and systematics. Proportionally fewer papers have focused on paleobiology and paleoecology of the basin's sauropods. The present work carried out a bibliographic survey of the species, as well as other specimens described as sauropods for the Bauru Basin, and a discussion on the abundance, diversity, distribution, and succession through time of these animals. Ten formally described species of sauropods were found for the basin, all considered titanosaurs, mostly Aeolosaurini, besides at least one Saltaraurinae and one form related to Lognkosauria. Only 9 species are considered currently valid and at least one additional species has been recognized in the literature, but its description has not yet been formally published. Additionally, 15 papers describing material attributed to sauropods were found in the literature but had no diagnosis beyond broader clades like Titanosauria or Lithostrotia. It was possible to recognize a relationship between the characteristics of the depositional environments and the mode of preservation of the specimens. Furthermore, a relationship between body size and niche segregation could be inferred, in which distinct sizes would have allowed the coexistence of these animals in the different environments through time. The realization of better paleobiological and paleoecological inferences about sauropods from the Bauru Basin, however, depends on more detailed studies of the sites where these materials were collected and also on applied taphonomic analysis. This may help to considerably broaden the knowledge about the ecology and evolution of sauropods in Gondwana during the Cretaceous.