Abstract
In this work 40 isolated teeth of theropod dinosaurs from the Cenomanian (Upper Cretaceous) locality of Algora are described. The paleontological area of Algora (Guadalajara province, Spain) provides the highest concentration of macroremains of Cenomanian vertebrates in southwestern Europe. Isolated theropod teeth are the most abundant remains in Algora as far as this group is concerned. Isolated theropod teeth constitute important evidence to analyse theropod diversity, since they are quite common in the fossil record. There have been previous tentative assignations of these theropod teeth to different theropod groups such as Carcharodontosauridae and Abelisauridae. However, in this work we have conducted a more exhaustive and robust analysis with a larger sample size using morphological comparisons using multivariate and cladistic analyses. The results of the analyses carried out in this work support the identification of the isolated teeth of Algora as a theropod abelisaurid, most likely belonging to the subfamily Majungasaurinae. This would further corroborate the presence of this abelisaurid lineage in Europe during the Late Cretaceous, from the Cenomanian onwards.
Abbreviations
- AL:
Apical length
- CA:
Crown angle
- Cap:
Crown apex
- CBL:
Crown base length
- CBW:
Crown base width
- CH:
Crown height
- DA:
Disto-apical denticle density
- DB:
Disto-basal denticle density
- DC:
Disto-central denticle density
- Dca:
Distal carina
- DentD/mm:
Number of distal denticles per millimetre
- DentM/mm:
Number of mesial denticles per millimetre
- Ids:
Interdenticular sulci
- MA:
Mesio-apical denticle density
- MB:
Mesio-basal denticle density
- MC:
Mesio-central denticle density
- Mca:
Mesial carina
- MCL:
Mid-crown length
- MCW:
Mid-crown width
- Mun:
Marginal undulations
- Wfa:
Wear facet
Funding
Angélica Torices and Mirella López Miguel are supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Inovacion y universidades, Proyecto Consolidación Investigadora 2023 CNS2023-144950. This research has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through project PID2023-148083NB-I00, the Regional Government of Castile-La Mancha (SBPLY/24/180801/000043 and SBPLY/25/180801/000043) and CEECIND/01770/2018 of the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information. (download PDF )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
López-Miguel, M., Torices, A., Malafaia, E. et al. Cenomanian theropod teeth from Algora (central Spain), new evidence for majungasaurine abelisaurids in Europe.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-53271-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-53271-3
Keywords
- Theropod
- Teeth
- Cladistic
- Morphometry
- Upper Cretaceous
- Spain
Source: Ecology - nature.com
