Qualla: Adamantina Formation

Adamantina Formation: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Atlantis536, CC0. The rocks look ordinary at first glance - reddish sandstones and mudstones stacked in quiet sequence across western Sao Paulo state. But the Adamantina Formation is a graveyard, and what has been exhumed from it is extraordinary. Titanosaurs the size of buses. Crocodiles that ran on four upright legs. Armored sphagesaurids with cheek teeth that chewed plants like mammals long before mammals were large enough to matter. The formation captures a slice of Late Cretaceous Brazil, roughly 87 to 72 million years ago, during the long closing act of the age of dinosaurs. For paleontologists, this is one of the most productive dinosaur-bearing formations in South America - and a window into the strange, distinctive fauna that evolved after Gondwana broke apart.

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Image: Atlantis536 | CC0

Adamantina Formation: The World That Made These Rocks

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TotalDino, CC BY 4.0. To understand the Adamantina Formation, you have to imagine a world where Brazil and Africa had only recently pulled apart. During the Early Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangea began breaking up, and as Gondwana split, the Parana Basin subsided to form a vast inland depression st...

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Image: TotalDino | CC BY 4.0

Adamantina Formation: The Crocodiles That Ruled the Land

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smokeybjb, CC BY-SA 3.0. If the Adamantina has a signature group, it is not the dinosaurs. It is the notosuchians - strange, terrestrial crocodiles that filled ecological roles lions and wolves fill today. Baurusuchus was a pursuit predator with long legs and serrated, knife-like teeth, built to run down...

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Image: Smokeybjb | CC BY-SA 3.0

Adamantina Formation: Titans and Theropods

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GeoPotinga, CC BY-SA 3.0. The sauropods of the Adamantina were titanosaurs, the last great lineage of long-necked dinosaurs. Maxakalisaurus topai was reconstructed from a remarkably complete skeleton - a fragmentary maxilla with teeth, cervical and dorsal vertebrae, ribs, limb bones, an osteoderm suggesti...

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Image: GeoPotinga | CC BY-SA 3.0

Adamantina Formation: Why This Record Matters

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jorgeyofzs, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Adamantina is one of the best windows we have into what Gondwanan ecosystems looked like in the final act of the Cretaceous. South America was by then an island continent, drifting westward from Africa, and its fauna was taking on distinctive shapes - sphagesaurid crocodiles ...

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Image: Jorgeyofzs | CC BY-SA 3.0