''Brasilotitan'' (meaning "Brazil giant") is a genus of

titanosaur Titanosaurs (or titanosaurians; members of the group Titanosauria) were a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, including genera from all seven continents. The titanosaurs were the last surviving group of long-necked sauropods, with taxa still th ...

ian

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their bo ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the ...

(early

Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian () is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the latest age (uppermost stage) of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series, the Cretaceous Period or System, and of the Mesozoic Era or Erathem. It spanned the interval from ...

)

Adamantina Formation The Adamantina Formation is a geological formation in the Bauru Basin of western São Paulo state, in southeastern Brazil. Its strata date back to the Late Cretaceous epoch of the Cretaceous Period, during the Mesozoic Era. The formation is p ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

is ''Brasilotitan nemophagus''.

Material and morphology

The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

was collected near Presidente Prudente city, São Paulo state. It consists of a

dentary In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower tooth, teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movabl ...

, cervical and sacral

vertebrae The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic i ...

, one ungual, and remains of the pelvic region. The mandible has an 'L' shaped morphology, with the symphyseal region of the dentary slightly twisted medially, a feature never recorded before in any titanosaur.

Phylogeny

Although the phylogenetic position of ''Brasilotitan'' is difficult to establish, the new species is neither basal nor a derived member of Titanosauria. Based on lower jaw morphology, it appears to be closely related to ''

Antarctosaurus ''Antarctosaurus'' (; meaning "southern lizard") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. The type species, ''Antarctosaurus wichmannianus'', and a second species, ''Antarctosau ...

'' and '' Bonitasaura''. This discovery enriches the titanosaur diversity of Brazil and provides further new anatomical information on the lower jaws of those herbivorous dinosaurs.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q14624796 Titanosaurs Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of South America Cretaceous Brazil Fossils of Brazil Adamantina Formation Fossil taxa described in 2013