Accepted Manuscript

Trajectory and contribution of geoscientists (1906–1961) to dinosaur research in theBauru Group (Cretaceous) in the Triângulo Mineiro region of Brazil

Drielli Peyerl , Carlos Roberto A. Candeiro , Silvia Fernanda Mendonça Figueirôa

PII: S0895-9811(14)00159-X

DOI: 10.1016/j.jsames.2014.11.005

Reference: SAMES 1346

To appear in: Journal of South American Earth Sciences

Received Date: 8 May 2014

Revised Date: 29 October 2014

Accepted Date: 7 November 2014

Please cite this article as: Peyerl, D., Candeiro, C.R.A., Mendonça Figueirôa, S.F., Trajectory andcontribution of geoscientists (1906–1961) to dinosaur research in the Bauru Group (Cretaceous) in theTriângulo Mineiro region of Brazil, Journal of South American Earth Sciences (2014), doi: 10.1016/j.jsames.2014.11.005.

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Trajectory and contribution of geoscientists (1906–1961) to dinosaur

research in the Bauru Group (Cretaceous) in the Triângulo Mineiro region

of Brazil

1Drielli Peyerl, 1,2Carlos Roberto A. Candeiro, 3Silvia Fernanda Mendonça Figueirôa

1Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ensino e História de Ciências da Terra, Instituto de

Geociências, Rua João Pandiá Calógeras, 51, Barão Geraldo, 13083-870, Campinas,

São Paulo State, Brazil

2Laboratório de Geologia, Curso de Geografia, Campus Pontal, Universidade Federal de

Uberlândia, Rua 20, n. 1.600, Bairro Tupã, Ituiutaba, Minas Gerais State, Brazil

3Programa de Pós-Graduação Multiunidades em Ensino de Ciências e Matemática,

Faculdade de Educação, Av. Bertrand Russell, 801, Cidade Universitária "Zeferino

Vaz" ,13083-865, Campinas, São Paulo State, Brazil

Abstract: The present study discusses geological and paleontological research

conducted by geoscientists in the Late Cretaceous Bauru Group , of the Triângulo

Mineiro region, Brazil. This analysis based largely on historical documentary sources

focuses on the pioneering work of geoscientists, who made numerous discoveries of

dinosaur fossils. This work contributes to a chronological survey that has been compiled

on the geological studies in the Bauru Group, and describes the importance of the

paleontological discoveries made during the twentieth century.

Keywords: History of Paleontology, Dinosaur, Bauru Group, Cretaceous, Brazil.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT1 Introduction

The objective of this study is to evaluate the historical importance of geological

and paleontological studies and surveys of the Bauru Group in the Triângulo Mineiro

region conducted by a few pioneering geoscientists during the twentieth century. It is

based on bibliographical sources in the fields of history of science, geoscience and in

particular paleontology.

In order to provide a better understanding of the topic and the work of the

geoscientists, we first add context by describing the geological setting of the Bauru

Group (Upper Cretaceous). The Bauru Basin lies within five Brazilian states: Goiás,

Mato Grosso do Sul, southeastern Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais (specifically in the

Triângulo Mineiro region), Paraná and western São Paulo (sensu Fernandes and

Coimbra, 1996). This geotectonic unit has its genesis related to events in the central

region of the western Gondwana during the late Cretaceous.

The first discovery and collection of dinosaurian remains from the Triângulo

Mineiro region occurred in the municipality of Monte Alegre de Minas in 1931 (Huene,

1931; Candeiro, 2011). During prospecting for mineral resources by naturalists of the

Serviço Geológico e Mineralógico do Brasil (Brazilian Geological and Mineralogical

Survey) and Comissão Geográfica e Geológica de São Paulo (Geographical and

Geological São Paulo Commission), fragments of fossilized bones were discovered in

Cretaceous limestone and sandstones of Monte Alegre de Minas. At that time, this

material was identified as a sauropod femur by Professor Frederich von Huene in 1931.

Huene (1931) described one of the fossil bones as “...Femur Sauropoden wurden bei

Monte Alegre de Minas gebiet gefunden / ...The sauropod femur was found at Monte

Alegre de Minas area..." (Huene, 1931). The actual date of collection and specific

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTlocality on which the bones were found remains unknown, but the earliest reports

suggest that it could have come from a limestone quarry near Monte Alegre town.

In 1940, members of a government survey in the Triângulo Mineiro region, led by Dr.

Llewellyn Ivor Price, discovered several fossilized vertebrate remains. In the

municipality of Uberaba , Price found a dinosaur eggshell and other vertebrate remains.

In the Peirópolis region, near the train station, a large quantity of fossil vertebrates were

collected and sent to the Serviço Geológico e Mineralógico do Brasil (Brazilian

Geological and Mineralogical Survey) by the survey team. Price’s descriptions of this

material include the second account of a Cretaceous reptile from the Triângulo Mineiro

region (Price, 1951). The Uberaba Cretaceous fossil remains were discovered by Price

during local prospecting in order to perform improvements described as "roadside

embankments and extraction of limestone near Peirópolis" (Candeiro and Bergqvist,

2004). The fossils were found at the outskirts of Mangabeira district and Uberaba city.

The fossil remains of Peirópolis are mainly from what is known today as the

Marília Formation, while a few other fossils are from the Uberaba Formation (Bauru

Group, sensu Fernandes and Coimbra, 1996; Candeiro et al., 2008). This assemblage is

best known for its turtles, crocodyliforms and dinosaurs, but remains of amphibians,

fishes (the most abundant fossils), plants (charophyts, ferns and spores), molluscs,

ostracods and conchostracans are also recorded from Peirópolis. All recorded fossils

from this locality are in a good condition of preservation, and collectively indicate a

freshwater paleoenvironment.

The first vertebrate ichnofossils from Brazil were described from the Uberaba

region . The first record of a round eggshell from the region of Mangabeiras was

described as Titanosauria indet, originally to Sauropoda (Price, 1951). The important

and enigmatic crocodyliforms Peirosaurus torminni (Price, 1955) and Itasuchus

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limestone quarry, which is now known as Point 1 of Price (Date). The first Cretaceous

Brazilian squamat lizard record was found on a road near Peirópolis and described by

Price and Estes (1973).

2 Material and Methods

The information provided here is based on the studies and researches of the

geoscientists who worked during the early twentieth century in Bauru Group in the

Triângulo Mineiro region. The analysis of the contents of the documents was made

using the hermeneutic method (i.e., investigating and interpreting the information in the

sources). The use of this method, however, should not be understood in a restricted

sense. Hermeneutics can lead to new and critical discoveries and contributions,

broadening our horizon of possibilities. Thus, we emphasize that "writing a story about

a period means finding assertions that could never be made in that period” (Alberti,

1996, p. 22).

3 Geological and paleontological historical context of the Bauru Group

The Bauru Group has both complex nomenclatural and age histories (Fernandes

and Coimbra, 1996; Dias-Brito et al., 2001) due to the artificial division of Cretaceous

strata in the lowland regions of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais (Triângulo

Mineiro region), Paraná and São Paulo states. Thus, the strata of the Bauru Group

(sensu Fernandes and Coimbra, 1996) had previously been described as Bauru

Sandstone (Gonzaga de Campos, 1905), Bauru Series (Freitas, 1955), Bauru Formation

(Arid, 1967), and more recently as Bauru Group (Soares et al., 1980), or even assumed

to belong to the Paraná Basin (Barcelos, 1984) and the Gondwana Sequence/Paraná

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTBasin (Milani et al., 2007). Here, we follow the stratigraphic scheme of Fernandes and

Coimbra (1996).

Several Cretaceous fossil localities in the Triângulo Mineiro region, western São

Paulo state, and southern-central Mato Grosso state have been found in strata that

yielded abundant vertebrates in Bauru Group strata. The sequence of the Bauru Basin is

divided into two classical units, Caiuá Group comprising the Santo Anastácio, Goio Erê

and Rio Parana formations, and the Bauru Group comprising the Adamantina, Uberaba

and Marília formations (sensu Fernandes and Coimbras, 1996).

Derby (1896) was the first author to mention tetrapod remains, such as turtles

and dinosaurs in rocks that now are known to belong to the Bauru Group. Later, von

Ihering (1911) mentioned crocodyliform teeth from the same unit, followed by

contributions by Pacheco (1913), von Huene (1931), Roxo (1936, 1937), and von

Staesche (1937). At that time, tetrapod research was the most advanced in Brazilian

paleontology due to the abundant and complete fossil record from the Bauru Group in

the Triângulo Mineiro region and São Paulo state.

Several important paleontological studies were undertaken by Llewellyn Ivor

Price (1945, 1950a, b, 1951, 1953, 1955; Estes and Price, 1973). Price studied the

reptilian-bearing deposits of the Marília and Adamantina formations, in the Triângulo

Mineiro region and in western São Paulo State, describing both vertebrate body fossils

and ichnofossils, as well as some invertebrates. The crocodyliform and dinosaur

material discovered increased considerably our knowledge of Bauru Group tetrapods,

revealing this unit as one of the most important reptilian-bearing horizons from the

Brazilian Late Cretaceous.

Milward (1935) established the Bauru Formation – which was "named by

Gonzaga de Campos (1905) for sandstones cemented with limestone at the region of

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTBauru and Itapura (São Paulo state)" (Ladeira, et al., 1971, p. 21) – in the Triângulo

Mineiro region. "This correlation was endorsed by Barbosa (1934), who studied tuff

formations in Uberaba" (Maranasi, 2002, p. 48).

“In São Paulo state, Almeida and Barbosa (1953) divided the

Bauru Formation into two units naming the lower part Itaqueri

(sandstones with clay cement, shales and conglomerates, with

predominantly sandy fraction) and the upper of Marília

(sandstones, shales and conglomerates). This is characterized

according to these authors due the abundance of limestone

cement, contains remains of dinosaurs and other reptiles that

were studied by Pacheco (1913) and von Huene (1930)”

(Ladeira et al., 1971, p. 21).

Modern stratigraphic arrangements of the Bauru Group

Fernandes and Coimbra (1996) proposed a revised stratigraphic scheme for the

Bauru Group unit, including, in ascending order the Adamantina, Uberaba and Marília

formations. This scheme is widely adopted today.

The Adamantina Formation, defined by Soares et al. (1980), and the Uberaba

Formation are the most uniform and characteristic units of the group. The first

lithostratigraphic unit crops out from Uberlândia to the area of Iturama in the Triângulo

Mineiro region. It is unconformably overlain by the volcanic Serra Geral Formation and

interdigitates with the Uberaba Formation. Its rocks are fluvial-lacustrine reddish clays

and sands, deposited during warm and humid climate events (Soares et al., 1980;

Suguio and Barcelos, 1983). Based primarily on its vertebrate and invertebrate fossil

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al., 2001).

The Uberaba Formation was defined by Hasui (1969), and its type locality is

along the Uberaba road, north of Uberaba city, in the Triângulo Mineiro region. The

Uberaba Formation is exclusively exposed in the Uberaba and Romaria municipalities,

but its dinosaur-bearing unit is restricted to the Uberaba area. Lithologically, these rocks

are composed of freshwater limestone, sandstones, and basal conglomerates, all

cemented by calcite together with volcaniclastic sediments (Barcelos, 1984). According

to Dias-Brito et al. (2001), this formation is Coniacian-Santonian in age, having a

greenish fluvial-lacustrine deposit formed during warm climates (Barcelos, 1982;

Candeiro, 2007).

The Marília Formation, described by Almeida and Barbosa (1953) for the region

of western São Paulo and later identified as part of the Triângulo Mineiro region

(Suguio, 1973; Barcelos, 1984), is irregularly exposed in that region. This geological

unit consists of fine to medium sandstones intercalated by conglomerates. The

sandstones are cemented and contain carbonate concretions (Fúlfaro and Barcelos,

1991). According to Barcelos and Suguio (1987), this unit was deposited by alluvial

coalescent fans, later re-processed and finally deposited by a anastomosing fluvial

system, in association with calcretes and calcareous lacustrine deposits. Dias-Brito et al.

(2001) assigned a late Maastrichtian age to the Marília Formation based on its ostracod

content.

4 The research of geoscientists with the Bauru Group in the Triângulo

Mineiro region

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conducted in the Triângulo Mineiro region (Fig.1) were undertaken by the Austrian

Eugen Hussak, the German Friederich von Huene, and the Brazilian Llewellyn Ivor

Price. The studies began with Eugen Hussak (1856–1911) (Fig. 2), a pioneer Brazilian

researcher in the use of the petrographic microscope to describe new mineral species. In

1906, the overlapping of the Uberaba Formation sediments was recognized, designating

the post-Uberaba cycle (Barcelos, 1984). Researche performed between 1900 and 1945

were made by the renowned paleontologists Friederich von Huene and Llewellyn Ivor

Price.

-------------------------------Figure 1 near here-----------------------------------

Eugen Hussak was born in 1856 in Graz, Austria), and studied under Ferdinand

Zirkel’s supervision in Leipzig, where he completed his PhD studies. He was a member

of the Comissão Geográfica e Geológica de São Paulo curator of the Department of

Minerals at the British Museum (Figueirôa, 1997). He described the morphology of the

Brazilian mineral xenotime in 1891, and the new mineral species gorgeixite in 1906. In

1901, Prior published the work entitled Katechismus der Mineralogie, and also wrote

about the minerals associated with Brazilian diamonds (1898, 1906), and the occurrence

of palladium and platinum in Brazil (Prior, 1904, 1906, apud Wilson, 2014).

--------------------------------------Figure 2 – near here---------------------------------

Eugen Hussak (1856–1911)

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTFriederich von Heune (Fig. 03) was born March 22, 1875, in Tübingen,

Germany, and died in the same city on April 4, 1969. He was one of the most important

paleontologists and was an expert on dinosaurs of the world. Von Huene was a

respected member of several German academic bodies (Universität Tübingen) and in

Presbyterian circles.

Von Huene kept contact with the distinguished Brazilian researchers Euzébio de

Oliveira (director of the Serviço Geológico e Mineralógico) and Hermann von Ihering

(director of the Museu Paulista in São Paulo state), who arranged von Huene's stay in

Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo during 1928. Von Huene described important reptilian

specimens collected in Campina Verde and Monte Alegre de Minas municipalities, in

Minas Gerais state, which were then housed at the Serviço Geológico e Mineralógico

and at the Museu do Ipiranga (Brazilian Geological and Mineralogical Survey). Among

the described specimens, were sauropod dinosaur remains from the late Cretaceous of

the Bauru Group, referred to as a large femur from Monte Alegre de Minas, and

indeterminate bones from Campina Verde (von Huene, 1931), which are possibly from

the Maastrichtian Marília Formation (Candeiro, 2011).

--------------------------------Figure 3 – near here------------------------------------

Friederich von Huene (1875–1969)

Llewellyn Ivor Price (Fig. 4) was born October 9, 1905, in Santa Maria, Rio

Grande do Sul, Brazil, and died in 1980 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Price graduated in

zoology and geology at the University of Oklahoma, in the United States. He served as

a professor at Harvard University, U.S.A., before returning to Brazil in 1936. Price was

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from the Uberaba area and the Araripe Basin. He contributed significantly to the

development of paleontological research in the country. Price’s work on fossil

vertebrates and his approach to new areas of study were at the vanguard of Brazilian

paleontology. Nowadays, the collection of vertebrates studied by Price is housed at the

Departamento Nacional de Produção Mineral (DNPM/RJ), in Rio de Janeiro. Price

collected a great number of dinosaur remains from the Bauru Group (now known as

Marília Formation) that and also some sauropod and theropod specimens that were later

described by other paleontologists (e.g., Trotta et al., 2002; Kellner et al., 2005; Campos

et al., 2005; Machado et al., 2008, 2013).

--------------------------------Figure 4 near here----------------------------------------

Llewellyn Ivor Price (1905–1980)

Price was one of the first researchers wtoho develop paleontological research in

the State of Minas Gerais. Most paleontological research regarding the Bauru Group in

Minas Gerais was restricted to Uberaba and its vicinities. Research were especially

concentrated in the outcrops around Peirópolis due the discovery of fossil sites by Price

in the 1940s during limestone extraction (Alves and Peyerl, 2013).

It is relevant here to mention the discovery of sauropod remains described by

von Huene (1931) on the basis of a partial large femur from Monte Alegre de Minas.

Huene noted the presence of isolated bones that have been referred to as titanosaurian

taxa (Tab. 1). This is the first sauropod reported from the late Cretaceous Minas Gerais

state, and until 1950, this was one of the few dinosaurs recorded for the Triângulo

Mineiro region. The discovery confirmed the importance of the region as a dinosaur-

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currently lost) were referred to as Sauropoda indet. (from Monte Alegre de Minas) and

Titanosauria indet. (from Campina Verde) by Candeiro et al. (2005).

---------------------------------Table 1 near here--------------------------

First dinosaurs described for the late Cretaceous of the Triângulo Mineiro

region.

The year 1940 also marked the beginning of the “Dinosaur Bone Age” of the

Triângulo Mineiro region. Besides the well-known titanosaur bones, the first discovery

of a titanosaur egg in South America was made in Uberaba, in the northern district of

Mangabeira (Marília Formation), near the Mogiana railway (Price, 1951, 1961). The

Serra do Veadinho mountain in the Peirópolis district is the richest dinosaur-bearing

deposit found so far in Brazil. The site was discovered during the construction of the

Mogiana railway, and from 1947 to 1959 large quantities of dinosaur remains were

found in the area. These fossils were collected and housed by the Departamento

Nacional de Produção Mineral, and some specimens have been studied by Price, who

assigned the material to titanosaurids and theropods (Fig. 5).

-------------------------------Figure 5 near here---------------------------------------

Dinosaur remains from the Uberaba municipality. (A) sauropod femur and (B) theropod

egg discovered by Llewellyn Ivor Price in the locality of Mangabeira; original drawing

by Price, not scaled (modified from Kellner and Campos, 2000).

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT These fossils drew scientific attention to the Uberaba region shortly after 1940.

Nevertheless, von Huene’s (1931) first paleontological descriptions from Triângulo

Mineiro, Uberaba area, represented earlier systematic paleontological research in the

Triângulo Mineiro region. Before 1990, the only vertebrate material known from the

Uberaba area were two crocodyliforms, one lizard species, and indeterminate sauropod

and theropod remains.

5 Results and Conclusion

Recent paleontological studies which revise the dinosaurs of the Triângulo Mineiro

region highlight von Huene’s works several times (e.g. Kellner and Campos, 2000;

Candeiro et al., 2006) and show several systematic controversies (e.g. Candeiro and

Martinelli, 2006). This demonstrates the importance of the late Cretaceous fossils from

western São Paulo and the Triângulo Mineiro's Pontal region, which were described by

von Huene. However, it is not known whether von Huene was ever in these fossiliferous

sites (Candeiro, 2011).

The Triângulo Mineiro's paleontological researches dramatically decreased during

the 1960s. The beginning of the ‘dinosaur renaissance’ (Kellner and Campos, 2000) is

usually attributed to the inauguration of the Centro de Pesquisas Paleontológicas

Llewellyn Ivor Price in Peirópolis, which received some support from the local

government to excavate nearby fossil sites. As far as we know, this initiative for a

systematic collection of fossils in the Triângulo Mineiro region is unique in Brazil.

From the point of view of historiography, few researches are made on the

published works of von Huene and Price. It is necessary to highlight the importance of

paleontology to the Triângulo Mineiro region at that time, since von Huene and Price

were the first Brazilian dinosaur researchers to study this fauna in the Minas Gerais

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nowadays. In addition, several authors contributed to the development of studies of

Cretaceous sediments of the Triângulo Mineiro region, among whom are Hasui (1968

and 1969), Barbosa et al. (1970), Suguio (1973), Soares and Landim (1975) and

Coimbra (1976) (Maranesi, 2002).

Although the Triângulo Mineiro region was an important dinosaur-bearing area

in the 1930s and 1940s, only two brief dinosaur descriptions were published by von

Huene (1931) and Price (1951). Among the reasons for the limited early paleontological

research in dinosaurs from the Triângulo Mineiro region, we note the absence of

Brazilian paleontologists who worked on this region.

The execution of paleontological research in the Triângulo Mineiro region

increased after 1990. Four species, one genus, three families, and other new taxa of

dinosaurs have been described for the first time for this area. There has been an

exponential increase in the number of abstracts, articles, monographs, dissertations and

theses about new dinosaur-bearing areas in the Triângulo Mineiro region (Campina

Verde, Monte Alegre de Minas, Prata, and Uberaba).

Price’s paleontological collection from Uberaba, which is housed at the Serviço

Mineralógico do Brasil (now Departamento Nacional de Produção Mineral, Rio de

Janeiro), has been recently studied, and new taxa described: the large titanosaurids

Baurutitan britoi (Kellner et al., 2005), Trigonosaurus pricei (Campos et al., 2005), an

indeterminate “Titanosauridae” (Azevedo and Kellner, 1998), Titanosauria (Powell,

1987, 2003; Trotta et al., 2000, 2007), Abelisauridae (Machado et al., 2013), and

Theropoda taxa (Kellner, 1994; Kellner et al., 1998; Machado et al., 2008). The new

collection from Uberaba area has revealed a representative dinosaur fauna, which have

been described since 1990, a large titanosaurid Uberabatitan ribeiroi (Salgado and

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Carcharodontosauridae (Candeiro et al., 2012), Maniraptora (Novas et al., 2005),

“Megaloolithidae” eggshell (Magalhães-Ribeiro, 2002), Theropoda indet. (Kellner,

1995), and Titanosauria (Santucci and Bertini, 2001, 2002; Marinho and Candeiro,

2005). In the Uberaba Formation, it was discovered fossil remains of Megaraptora indet.

(Martinelli et al., 2013) and Titanosauria indet. (Santucci, 2008).

After 1990, other areas in the Triângulo Mineiro region became important as

dinosaur-bearing deposits. From Turonian-Santonian Adamantina Formation in Prata

area representative dinosaurs taxa were described: Maxakalisaurus topai (Kellner et al.,

2006), a possible Aeolosaurus-indet. (Almeida et al., 2004), Abelisauridae indet. and

Carcharodontosauridae indet. (Candeiro et al., 2006), and Titanosauria indet. (Carrijo et

al., 2012). The late Maastrichtian Marília Formation (Soares et al., 2009) in the

Verisssimo municipality has records of Aeolosaurus sp. and indeterminate titanosaurids.

In the Campina Verde region some indeterminate titanosaurids, abelisaurids, and

theropods were reported by Oliveira et al. (2001), Riff and Machado (2013), Dias et al.

(2013), and Costa et al. (2012).

In the present study, we aimed to approach briefly several important historical

moments in Brazilian vertebrate paleontology, mainly associated with the Bauru Group

in the Triângulo Mineiro region. We also evidenced the work of important geoscientists,

recognizing the valuable contributions of their geological and paleontological studies in

the region.

Thus, the geoscientists were mentioned describing the Bauru Group and

recognizing the formations and Cretaceous stratigraphic sequences by characterizing,

distinguishing, and establishing the relationship between the Bauru Group in the

Triângulo Mineiro region and the sedimentary rocks of São Paulo state, and

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geoscientists cited here and their local studies directed paleontological research in

Brazil toward new horizons, and contributed to ongoing dinosaur research in Brazil.

6 Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank especially Cristina de Campos (Unicamp/Brazil) for her

friendship and contributions to the knowledge of the Mogiana Railway. They also

acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for all suggested improvements to this paper.

David Martill (University of Portsmouth) made the final revision of the article. This

contribution was partially supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento

Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq). R. Candeiro and S. Figueirôa are also grateful to

CNPq for the Produtividade em Pesquisa fellowship and Drielli Peyerl thanks the

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo for her postdoctoral

fellowship.

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Cretaceous of Brazil. Boletim do Museu Nacional/Nova Série Geologia 64, 1-11.

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Figure 1. Geographical map of the mainly early dinosaur-bearing area in Triângulo

Mineiro region (adapted from Fernandes and Coimbra, 1996).

Figure 2. Portrait austrian Eugen Hussak (1856–1911) (from

http://www.mast.br/apresentacao/eugenio_hussak_01.png)

Figure 3. German paleontologist Friederich Richard von Huene (1875–1969)

(from <https://m.ak.fbcdn.net/scontent-

a.xx/hphotosfrc3/t1.09/p350x350/1016967_410513872399209_1288786963_n.jpg>.).

Figure 4. Brazilian paleontologist Llewellyn Ivor Price (1905–1980) (from

http://cienciaecuriosidade.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/price1.jpg).

Figure 5. Dinosaur remains from Uberaba municipality. (A, original drawing of Price)

sauropod femur, (B) titanosaur egg, and (C) theropods eggs discovered by Llewellyn

Ivor Price; figure not scaled (A, C, modified from Kellner and Campos, 2000; B,

modified from Lima, 1989).

Table 1. First dinosaurs described from Late Cretaceous Triângulo Mineiro region.

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Table 1. First dinosaurs described from Late Cretaceous Triângulo Mineiro region.

Taxa Fossil Stratigraphic unit Locality Author

Titanosauria

indet.

Indeterminate

bones

Adamantina Formation? Campina Verde Huene (1931)

Sauropoda

indet.

Femur Marília Formation Monte Alegre de Minas Huene (1931)

Tinosauria

indet.

Eggs Marília Formation Uberaba (Mangabeira

district)

Price (1951)

Theropoda Eggs Uberaba Formation Uberaba (Peirópolis

area)

Kellner and

Campos (2000)

Sauropoda Femur Uberaba Formation Uberaba (Mangabeira

district)

Kellner and

Campos (2000)

Titanosauria

indet.

Post-cranial

bones

Marília Formation Uberaba (Peirópolis

area)

Price (1961)

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTHighlights

The development of paleontological research in the Triangulo Mineiro region.

The description of the trajectory of paleontologists who contributed to the studies of the

region.

The work of paleontologists in the Triângulo Mineiro region, during twentieth century.