18-09-2025
Image: Illustration of Cariocecus bocagei and what its habitat in the Papo Seco Formation during the Early Cretaceous might have looked like. Artistic reconstruction by Victor F. Carvalho.
José Carlos Kullberg, professor at the Department of Earth Sciences and researcher at Geobiotec of NOVA FCT, was part of an international team of scientists that described a new species of iguanodont dinosaur, named Cariocecus bocagei, recently published in the prestigious international journal Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
This herbivorous dinosaur roamed the lush valleys of the Early Cretaceous (around 125 million years ago) in what is now the Iberian Peninsula. Specifically, specimen SHN.832 (an identification that includes the initials of the Sociedade de História Natural de Torres Vedras, where the skull is stored) was found on the coastal cliffs south of Lisbon, in the municipality of Sesimbra.
The name Cariocecus refers to the ancient war deity “Cariocecus,” worshiped by local populations in the pre-Roman period (this deity’s name was later changed to Mars and Ares with the Roman conquest of the territory). The species name bocagei honors José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage, a famous 19th-century Portuguese naturalist.
The new iguanodont lived in what we now call the Papo Seco Formation, sharing its habitat with titanosaurs (long-necked, long-tailed sauropod dinosaurs) and a “cousin” of the famous predator Spinosaurus, called Iberospinus. Other iguanodonts had been found here in the past, but none displayed the necessary characteristics to be considered a new species.
The stratigraphic positioning, which had decisive implications for dating the discovered fossil, was made possible thanks to detailed work on age correlation and analysis of the evolution of sedimentary environments in the stratigraphic sequence, carried out by the NOVA FCT geologist and professor. This contribution proved to be crucial for the scientific value of the discovery.
The exceptional preservation and three-dimensionality of several cranial elements of Cariocecus enabled the digital reconstruction of the brain, cranial nerves, and especially the inner ear. Recent studies have shown how the study of the inner ear and its physical properties can provide new insights into dinosaur metabolism, and the results obtained with Cariocecus will contribute in the future to new discoveries about the sensory and thermoregulatory aspects of these animals.
The study was coordinated by Filippo Bertozzo, of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and the Center for Paleobiology and Paleoecology (Ci2Paleo) of the Sociedade de História Natural de Torres Vedras (SHN), and co-authored by José Carlos Kullberg (NOVA University Lisbon), the Italian Fabio Manucci, Victor Feijó de Carvalho (SHN), Silvério D. Figueiredo (Polytechnic Institute of Tomar), and the Belgian Pascal Godefroit (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences).
In the press
Descoberta em Sesimbra nova espécie de dinossauro com 125 milhões de anos, Observador
Paleontólogos anunciam nova espécie de dinossauro com 125 milhões de anos, Público
"Cariocecus bocagei" é uma nova espécie de dinossauro descoberta em Sesimbra, RTP
Nova espécie de dinossauro encontrada em Portugal, The Portugal News
