Bonitas aura
| Bonitas aura | ||||||||||||
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Fossils of bonitasaura salgadoi , |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous ( Santonium ) | ||||||||||||
| 86.3 to 83.6 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Bonitas aura | ||||||||||||
| Apesteguía , 2004 | ||||||||||||
| Art | ||||||||||||
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Bonitasaura is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the group of Titanosauria . So far, a single fragmentary skeleton is known from the Upper Cretaceous ( Santonium ) Argentina . The only species is Bonitasaura salgadoi .
features
Bonitasaura was about nine meters long, making it a relatively small sauropod. The skull with its box-shaped dentition, whose thin, pin-like teeth were limited to the foremost part of the jaw, was unique. Behind it, in the toothless part of the lower jaw, there are indications of a keratin beak , which may have served to cut off the vegetable food.
Diagnostic for Bonitas aura within the Titanosauria are the fewer numerous tooth sockets , the strongly built, diagonally oriented bases of the vertebral arches and the bulging spinous processes of the anterior vertebrae.
Systematics
Bonitasaura was probably closely related to the Malagasy genus Rapetosaurus and the Mongolian genera Nemegtosaurus and Quaesitosaurus . Some researchers summarize these genera together with Bonitasaura in a group called Nemegtosauridae .
Find, research history and naming
The only known skeleton ( holotype , specimen number MPCA 300) is only preserved in fragments, but was found partially articulated (in a composite). Today it is kept in the Museo Provincial Carlos Ameghino Cipolletti . It consists of three bones of the skull - the frontal bone , the parietal bone and the mandible, including 15 teeth - made up of sections of the cervical, dorsal and caudal vertebral column, as well as parts of the extremities, including the upper arm bone (humerus), spoke (radius), two metacarpal bone (metacarpal ), thigh bone (femur), tibia (tibia) and two metatarsal bone (metacarpal). The skeleton belonged to a not yet fully grown ( subadult ) animal.
The skeleton comes from a quarry called "La Bonita Hill" near Cerro Policía in the Argentine province of Río Negro . It was found embedded in sandstones that were deposited fluviatil (by rivers) and belong to the uppermost layers of the Bajo-de-la-Carpa formation .
Bonitasaura was first scientifically described in 2004 by Sebastián Apesteguía . The generic name Bonitasaura refers to the place where it was found, the quarry "La Bonita Hill", while the specific epithet salgadoi honors the Argentine paleontologist Leonardo Salgado .
supporting documents
Main source
- Sebastián Apesteguía: Bonitasaura salgadoi gen. Et sp. nov .: a beaked sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia. In: Natural Sciences . Vol. 91, No. 10, 2004, pp. 493-497, doi : 10.1007 / s00114-004-0560-6 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Gregory S. Paul : The Princeton Field Guide To Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-13720-9 , p. 210, online ( memento of the original of July 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ Jeffrey A. Wilson: Redescription of the Mongolian Sauropod Nemegtosaurus mongoliensis Nowinski (Dinosauria: Saurischia) and comments on Late Cretaceous Sauropod diversity. In: Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Vol. 3, No. 3, 2005, ISSN 1477-2019 , pp. 283-318, doi : 10.1017 / S1477201905001628 .
