Muyelensaurus
| Muyelensaurus | ||||||||||||
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (late Turonian ) | ||||||||||||
| 91.4 to 89.7 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Muyelensaurus | ||||||||||||
| Calvo et al. , 2007 | ||||||||||||
| Art | ||||||||||||
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Muyelensaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the group of titanosaur , in the Upper Cretaceous (late Turonium lived) South America. Like all sauropods, Muyelensaurus was a large, quadruped (four-footed) herbivore with a long neck and tail.
So far, remains of four adult and one juvenile individual are known, all of which were discovered at the same site in the Argentine province of Neuquén . The only species , Muyelensaurus pecheni , was found by Calvo et al. first described . The first authors interpret Rinconsaurus as the closest known relative of Muyelensaurus and set up a new group, the Rinconsauria, to underline the similarities between the two genera.
features
Like Rinconsaurus , Muyelensaurus was a medium-sized, rather slender titanosaur. Distinguishing features ( autapomorphies ) can be found especially in the cranial bones and the vertebrae, and the lower end of the pubic bone was rectangular and thick.
Find and naming
The fossils come from the Loma del Lindero site, 10 km west of Rincón de los Sauces near the Río Colorado . The excavations at this site ran from 1998 to 2001 and were under the direction of the Argentine paleontologist Jorge Calvo, who is also the first author of the scientific publication. A total of about 300 titanosaur bones were recovered, along with the remains of theropods and a fossil turtle .
The fluvial deposits from which the fossils originate belong to the Portezuelo Formation , which is part of the basis of the Río Neuquén Subgroup ( Neuquén Group ) - so the finds can be dated from the Turonian to the early Coniacian . The Muyelensaurus fossils include cervical, back, sacral and caudal vertebrae, as well as arm and leg bones, shoulder blades, pelvic bones and skull bones (incomplete brain skull (neurocranium) and premaxillaries with teeth). In the area around Rincón de los Sauces, Rinconsaurus caudamirus was also discovered, together with the crocodyliform Pehuenchesuchus enderi . Other finds from this area have been recovered but not yet described.
The name Muyelensaurus is derived from the words sauros ( Gr. ) - " Echse " and Muyelen , one of the names for the Río Colorado from the language of the Mapuche , a South American Indian tribe. The Artepitheth pecheni honors Ana María Pechen from the National University of Comahue , who supported dinosaur research in Neuquén.
literature
- Jorge O. Calvo , Bernardo J. González-Riga, Juan D. Porfiri: Muyelensaurus pecheni gen. Et sp. nov., a new titanosaur sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina. In: Arquivos do Museu Nacional. Rio de Janeiro. Vol. 65, No. 4, 2007, ISSN 0365-4508 , pp. 485-504, online (PDF; 1.66 MB) .
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. 205, online ( memento of the original from July 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
