''Vallibonavenatrix'' (meaning " Vallibona huntress" after the town near where its remains were found) is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

spinosaurid The Spinosauridae (or spinosaurids) are a clade or family of tetanuran theropod dinosaurs comprising ten to seventeen known genera. They came into prominence during the Cretaceous period. Spinosaurid fossils have been recovered worldwide, includi ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

from the

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous ( geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma. Geology Pro ...

(

Barremian The Barremian is an age in the geologic timescale (or a chronostratigraphic stage) between 129.4 ± 1.5 Ma (million years ago) and 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma). It is a subdivision of the Early Cretaceous Epoch (or Lower Cretaceous Series). It is preceded ...

)

Arcillas de Morella Formation The Arcillas de Morella Formation is a geological formation in Spain whose strata date back to the Barremian stage of the Early Cretaceous. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation.Weishampel, David B; et a ...

of Castellón,

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. The type and only

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

is ''Vallibonavenatrix cani'', known from a partial skeleton.

Discovery and naming

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, amateur

fossil collector Fossil collecting (sometimes, in a non-scientific sense, fossil hunting) is the collection of fossils for scientific study, hobby, or profit. Fossil collecting, as practiced by amateurs, is the predecessor of modern paleontology and many stil ...

Juan Cano Forner was recovering bones from various localities in Els Ports Natural Park, located in the Province of Castellón, Spain. In one of these—the Santa Águeda locality in the town of Vallibona—he excavated numerous

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () ( chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, ...

remains dating to the

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceo ...

era An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Compa ...

, among which were

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

. Forner housed these fossils in a private collection at

Sant Mateu Sant Mateu is a town and municipality in eastern Spain, in the province of Castellón, part of the autonomous community of Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most pop ...

, which the

Generalitat Valenciana The Generalitat Valenciana is the generic name covering the different self-government institutions under which the Spanish autonomous community of Valencia is politically organized. It consists of seven institutions including the ''Corts Valen ...

acknowledged as a museographic collection in 1994. In 2007, the Spanish

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

Fernando Gómez-Fernández and colleagues published a provisional description on the

pelvis The pelvis (plural pelves or pelvises) is the lower part of the trunk, between the abdomen and the thighs (sometimes also called pelvic region), together with its embedded skeleton (sometimes also called bony pelvis, or pelvic skeleton). The ...

of a theropod from Forner's collection. Further fossils from the same specimen included a

cervical In anatomy, cervical is an adjective that has two meanings: # of or pertaining to any neck. # of or pertaining to the female cervix: i.e., the ''neck'' of the uterus. *Commonly used medical phrases involving the neck are **cervical collar **cervic ...

(neck)

vertebra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...

, six dorsal (back) vertebrae, an almost complete

sacrum The sacrum (plural: ''sacra'' or ''sacrums''), in human anatomy, is a large, triangular bone at the base of the spine that forms by the fusing of the sacral vertebrae (S1S5) between ages 18 and 30. The sacrum situates at the upper, back part ...

, fragments of neurapophyses, four

caudal Caudal may refer to: Anatomy * Caudal (anatomical term) (from Latin ''cauda''; tail), used to describe how close something is to the trailing end of an organism * Caudal artery, the portion of the dorsal aorta of a vertebrate that passes into the ...

(tail) vertebrae, ten partial ribs and rib fragments, three incomplete

chevrons Chevron (often relating to V-shaped patterns) may refer to: Science and technology * Chevron (aerospace), sawtooth patterns on some jet engines * Chevron (anatomy), a bone * ''Eulithis testata'', a moth * Chevron (geology), a fold in rock lay ...

, an almost complete left ilium (main hip bone), fragments of the ventral part of a right ilium, incomplete right and left

ischia Ischia ( , , ) is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It lies at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, about from Naples. It is the largest of the Phlegrean Islands. Roughly trapezoidal in shape, it measures approximately east to west ...

(lower and rearmost hip bone), and a fragment interpreted as belonging to the proximal part of a pubis (pubic bone).'''' In 2019, Elisabete Malafaia and colleagues published their description of a new

and

dinosaur, ''Vallibonavenatrix cani'', with the partial skeleton as the

holotype specimen A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

. The generic name refers to the town of Vallibona, with the Latin suffix "''-venatrix''", meaning "huntress". The specific name honours Cano Forner, the fossil's discoverer. ''Vallibonavenatrix'' represents the most complete spinosaurid specimen recovered from the

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

.'''' Other Iberian spinosaurids include ''

Iberospinus ''Iberospinus'' or (meaning " Iberian spine") is an extinct genus of spinosaurid dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous (Barremian) Papo Seco Formation of Portugal. The genus contains a single species, ''I. natarioi'', known from several assorted bo ...

'', '' Camarillasaurus'', '' Protathlitis'', and '' Riojavenatrix''.

Description

''Vallibonavenatrix'' was a moderately-sized bipedal

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

. The upwards-projecting

neural spines The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...

of its dorsal vertebrae were moderately tall, and one known spine is expanded from bottom to top in a

trapezoid A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a Convex polygon, convex quadri ...

al, fan-like shape, similar to those of the spinosaurid ''

Ichthyovenator ''Ichthyovenator'' is a genus of spinosaurid dinosaur that lived in what is now Laos, sometime between 125 and 113 million years ago, during the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous period. It is known from fossils collected from the Grè ...

''. Similarities between the

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

of the neural spines of these two taxa may indicate the presence of elongated spines forming a

sail A sail is a tensile structure—which is made from fabric or other membrane materials—that uses wind power to propel sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and even sail-powered land vehicles. Sails may ...

on ''Vallibonavenatrix'''s back, as is seen in some other spinosaurids. The sacrum of ''Vallibonavenatrix'' had deep pleurocoelous fossae (depressions) and

pneumatic Pneumatics (from Greek ‘wind, breath’) is a branch of engineering that makes use of gas or pressurized air. Pneumatic systems used in Industrial sector, industry are commonly powered by compressed air or compressed inert gases. A central ...

(air-filled) openings. The ilium of the pelvis was also highly pneumatic, and had large internal chambers.''''

Classification

In 2019, Malafaia and her team classified ''Vallibonavenatrix'' within the Spinosauridae, a

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

of large-bodied tetanuran dinosaurs traditionally separated into two

subfamilies In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end subfamily botanical names with "-oideae", and zoologi ...

: Spinosaurinae and Baryonychinae. Though closer in proximity to European baryonychines such as ''Baryonyx'' from the

of Spain and England, ''Vallibonavenatrix'' was found to be more closely related to spinosaurines such as '' Spinosaurus'' and ''

Irritator ''Irritator'' is a genus of spinosaurid dinosaur that lived in what is now Brazil during the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous Period, about 113 to 110 million years ago. It is known from a nearly complete skull found in the Romualdo Forma ...

'' from the southern supercontinent

Gondwana Gondwana () was a large landmass, often referred to as a supercontinent, that formed during the late Neoproterozoic (about 550 million years ago) and began to break up during the Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago). The final stages ...

, and the Asian genus ''

''. Thus, Malafaia and colleagues placed it within Spinosaurinae. The results of their analysis are shown in the following cladogram:'''' However, in 2021, Chris Barker and colleagues instead found ''Vallibonavenatrix'' in one of two positions, depending on the type of analysis ( parsimony-based or Bayesian) that they performed: outside of both Spinosaurinae and Baryonychinae as the most basal (least specialized) spinosaurid, or as a member of the Baryonychinae. They concluded that its phylogenetic position was unstable. Like the results of Barker ''et al.'', a 2022 study by

Octávio Mateus Octávio Mateus (born 1975) is a Portuguese dinosaur paleontologist and biologist Professor of Paleontology at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He graduated in Universidade de Évora and received his PhD at U ...

and Darío Estraviz-López did not find ''Vallibonavenatrix'' to be a spinosaurine. However, certain anatomical characteristics may indicate an affinity with that group, rather than with the baryonychines.

Palaeoenvironment

''Vallibonavenatrix'' hails from the

, which has been dated to the

stage of the

period, between 129.4 and 125

million years ago The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds. Usage Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago). ...

. It coexisted in this environment with other dinosaurs including the

ornithischia Ornithischia () is an extinct order of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. The name ''Ornithischia'', or "bird-hipped", reflects this similarity and is derived from the Greek s ...

ns ''

Iguanodon bernissartensis ''Iguanodon'' ( ; meaning 'iguana-tooth'), named in 1825, is a genus of iguanodontian dinosaur. While many species have been classified in the genus ''Iguanodon'', dating from the late Jurassic Period to the early Cretaceous Period of Asia, Eu ...

'' and '' Morelladon beltrani'', an indeterminate

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their bo ...

, and fellow spinosaurid '' Protathlitis''.Weishampel, David B; et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution (Early Cretaceous, Europe)." In: Weishampel, David B.; Dodson, Peter; and Osmólska, Halszka (eds.): The Dinosauria, 2nd, Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 562. .

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q66614821 Spinosaurids Barremian life Early Cretaceous dinosaurs of Europe Cretaceous Spain Fossil taxa described in 2019