| Vallibonavenatrix | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Life restoration based on the animal'sfossil remains and those of close relatives | |
Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | Saurischia |
| Clade: | Theropoda |
| Family: | †Spinosauridae |
| Genus: | †Vallibonavenatrix Malafaiaet al.,2019 |
| Type species | |
| †Vallibonavenatrix cani Malafaiaet al., 2019 | |
Vallibonavenatrix (meaning "Vallibona huntress" after the town near where its remains were found) is agenus ofspinosauriddinosaur from theEarly Cretaceous (Barremian)Arcillas de Morella Formation ofCastellón,Spain. Thetype and onlyspecies isVallibonavenatrix cani, known from a partial skeleton.[1]
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, amateurfossil collector Juan Cano Forner was recovering bones from various localities inEls Ports Natural Park, located in theProvince of Castellón, Spain. In one of these—the Santa Águeda locality in the town ofVallibona—he excavated numerousvertebrate remains dating to theMesozoicera, among which weredinosaurfossils. Forner housed these fossils in a private collection atSant Mateu, which theGeneralitat Valenciana acknowledged as amuseographic collection in 1994. In 2007, the Spanishpalaeontologist Fernando Gómez-Fernández and colleagues published a provisional description on thepelvis of atheropod from Forner's collection. Further fossils from the same specimen included acervical (neck)vertebra, sixdorsal (back) vertebrae, an almost completesacrum, fragments ofneurapophyses, fourcaudal (tail) vertebrae, ten partialribs and rib fragments, three incompletechevrons, an almost complete leftilium (main hip bone), fragments of the ventral part of a right ilium, incomplete right and leftischia (lower and rearmost hip bone), and a fragment interpreted as belonging to the proximal part of apubis (pubic bone).[1]
In 2019, Elisabete Malafaia and colleagues published theirdescription of a newgenus andspecies ofspinosaurid dinosaur,Vallibonavenatrix cani, with the partial skeleton as theholotype specimen. 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 theIberian Peninsula.[1] Other Iberian spinosaurids includeIberospinus,Camarillasaurus,Protathlitis, andRiojavenatrix.[2]
Vallibonavenatrix was a moderately-sizedbipedalpredator. The upwards-projectingneural spines of its dorsal vertebrae were moderately tall, and one known spine is expanded from bottom to top in atrapezoidal, fan-like shape, similar to those of the spinosauridIchthyovenator. Similarities between themorphology of the neural spines of these two taxa may indicate the presence of elongated spines forming asail onVallibonavenatrix's back, as is seen in some other spinosaurids. The sacrum ofVallibonavenatrix had deeppleurocoelous fossae (depressions) andpneumatic (air-filled) openings. The ilium of the pelvis was also highly pneumatic, and had large internal chambers.[1]
In 2019, Malafaia and her team classifiedVallibonavenatrix within the Spinosauridae, afamily of large-bodiedtetanuran dinosaurs traditionally separated into twosubfamilies: Spinosaurinae and Baryonychinae. Though closer in proximity to European baryonychines such asBaryonyx from theBarremian of Spain and England,Vallibonavenatrix was found to be more closely related to spinosaurines such asSpinosaurus andIrritator from the southernsupercontinentGondwana, and the Asian genusIchthyovenator. Thus, Malafaia and colleagues placed it within Spinosaurinae. The results of their analysis are shown in the followingcladogram:[1]
| Spinosauridae |
| |||||||||||||||||||||
However, in 2021, Chris Barker and colleagues instead foundVallibonavenatrix in one of two positions, depending on the type of analysis (parsimony-based orBayesian) that they performed: outside of both Spinosaurinae and Baryonychinae as the mostbasal (least specialized) spinosaurid, or as a member of the Baryonychinae. They concluded that its phylogenetic position was unstable.[3]
Like the results of Barkeret al., a 2022 study byOctávio Mateus and Darío Estraviz-López did not findVallibonavenatrix to be a spinosaurine. However, certain anatomical characteristics may indicate an affinity with that group, rather than with the baryonychines.[4] Spinosaurine affinities were supported in a 2025 reassessment ofCamarillasaurus by Rauhut and colleagues, who recoveredVallibonavenatrix within the Spinosaurinae, diverging afterIberospinus.[5]
Vallibonavenatrix hails from theArcillas de Morella Formation, which has been dated to theBarremianstage of theEarly Cretaceousperiod, between 129.4 and 125million years ago.[1] It coexisted in this environment with other dinosaurs including theornithischiansIguanodon bernissartensis andMorelladon beltrani, an indeterminatesauropod, and fellow spinosauridProtathlitis.[6][7]
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