Puertasaurus
| Puertasaurus | ||||||||||||
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Comparison of the vertebrae of Argentinosaurus and Puertasaurus |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (Lower Maastrichtian ) | ||||||||||||
| 72 to 69.9 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Puertasaurus | ||||||||||||
| Novas et al. , 2005 | ||||||||||||
| Art | ||||||||||||
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Puertasaurus is a genus of very large sauropod dinosaurs from the Titanosauria group . So far only very fragmentary fossils are known from the late Upper Cretaceous (early Maastrichtian ) in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz . The only species is Puertasaurus reuili .
description
What is remarkable about the vertebrae found is their size. The found cervical vertebra, probably cervical vertebra 9, has a largest diagonal size of 140 centimeters and is 118 centimeters long - only those of the brachiosaurid Sauroposeidon are longer. With a height of 106 centimeters and a width of 168 centimeters, the dorsal vertebra is wider than any other sauropod vertebra. Puertasaurus belonged to the largest sauropods of the Upper Cretaceous along with Argentinosaurus and Antarctosaurus . All three genera lived in South America.
Find
The only known find ( holotype , specimen number MPM-10002) comes from the layers of the Pari-Aike formation near Cerro Los Hornos . It consists of only four non-discovered in the anatomical context vertebrae : a cervical vertebra, one vertebra completely preserved and the vertebral bodies of two middle caudal vertebrae. Thus about 3% of the entire skeleton is known. These fossils were found in situ in lenses made of fine-grained, gray sandstone together with carbonized plant remains. Other dinosaurs of the Pari-Ake Formation include the basal Iguanodont Talenkaue and a tetanuric theropod that has not been described to this day .
Puertasaurus reuil after the discoverers and taxidermists of fossils, Pablo Puerta and Santiago Reuil, has been nominated.
Systematics
Puertasaurus is assigned to the Titanosauridae by the first descriptors based on features of the vertebrae . It was probably a basal (original) Titanosauridae. Other researchers consider the term Titanosauridae to be invalid and use the term Lithostrotia instead .
literature
- Fernando E. Novas , Leonardo Salgado , Jorge Calvo , Federico Agnolin: Giant titanosaur (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia. In: Revista del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. NS Volume 7, No. 1, 2005, ISSN 1514-5158 , pp. 37-41, ( digital copy ; PDF; 2.38 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. 206, (online)
- ↑ Jorge O. Calvo , Juan D. Porfiri, Bernardo J. González Riga, Alexander WA Kellner: Anatomy of Futalognkosaurus dukei Calvo, Porfiri, González Riga, & Kellner, 2007 (Dinosauria, Titanosauridae) from the Neuquen Group, Late Cretaceous, Patagonia , Argentina. In: Arquivos do Museu Nacional. Volume 65, No. 4, 2007, ISSN 0365-4508 , pp. 511-526, digitized version (PDF; 21.68 MB) ( Memento of the original from July 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ^ Paul Upchurch , Paul M. Barrett , Peter Dodson : Sauropoda. In: David B. Weishampel . Peter Dodson, Halszka Osmólska (ed.): The Dinosauria . 2nd Edition. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2004, ISBN 0-520-24209-2 , pp. 259-324.
