The dinosaurs of the Pyrenees: distribution and palaeoenvironments

摘要: The end-Cretaceous extinction event led to the demise of various plant and animal groups, including non-avian dinosaurs. Although the best-studied dinosaur fossil record from this age is found in the Western Interior of North America, a complete knowledge of how this extinction took place in other regions of the planet is lacking. In fact, there are relatively few data regarding the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in other areas of the planet.In southwestern Europe, the Late Cretaceous fossil record of eastern Iberia and southern France is potentially one of the best represented of the world. The region encompasses various geological basins that once formed the Ibero-Armorican Domain. This palaeogeographic region constituted the largest island of the European archipelago at the latest times of the Cretaceous (Philip and Floquet, 2000). Present-day areas of southern France and north-eastern Spain are a productive succession containing the fossil remains of dinosaurs and contemporary fauna/flora from the latest Cretaceous (Buffetaut and Le Loeuff, 1991; López-Martínez et al., 2001; Riera et al., 2009). In the Pyrenees, the coastal and continental formations exposed in Catalonia and Aragón (Spain), Corbières, Ariège and Petites Pyrénées (France) contain localities ranging from the late Campanian to the latest Maastrichtian. In the southern basins, because of their richness and chronostratigraphical position, the late Maastrichtian localities from northern Catalonia and Aragón provide a good example of the composition of dinosaur faunas and their environment just before their demise.