''Bravasaurus'' (meaning Laguna Brava lizard) is a genus of

titanosaurian 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 thr ...

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 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 ...

Ciénaga del Río Huaco Formation of

La Rioja, Argentina La Rioja () is the capital and largest city of La Rioja Province, Argentina, located in the east of the province. La Rioja is located on the foot of the Velasco Sierras, from Buenos Aires, and from Córdoba. History It was founded in 15 ...

. It contains one species, ''Bravasaurus arreirosorum''.

Etymology

The generic name ''Bravasaurus'' is derived from the Laguna Brava National Park in Argentina. The specific name refers to the people, the ''arreiros'' or drivers in Spanish, who carried cattle through the

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

in the 19th century.

Description

''Bravasaurus'' was roughly long. It is known from 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 ...

CRILAR-Pv 612, which consists of the right quadrate and quadratojugal, four cervical, five dorsal, and three caudal vertebrae, few dorsal ribs, three

haemal arch A haemal arch also known as a chevron, is a bony arch on the ventral side of a tail vertebra of a vertebrate. The canal formed by the space between the arch and the vertebral body is the haemal canal. A spinous ventral process emerging from the hae ...

es, the left humerus, a fragmentary ulna, the metacarpal IV, a partial left ilium with sacral ribs, the right pubis, a partial ischium, the left femur, and both fibulae, and the

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). Of ...

CRILAR-Pv 613, which consists of an isolated tooth, the right ilium, the right femur, and dorsal ribs.

Classification

The describers' phylogenetic analysis places ''Bravasaurus'' as a derived member of the

Lithostrotia Lithostrotia is a clade of derived titanosaur sauropods that lived during the Early Cretaceous and Late Cretaceous. The group was defined by Upchurch ''et al.'' in 2004 as the most recent common ancestor of ''Malawisaurus'' and ''Saltasaurus'' an ...

, in the clade

Aeolosaurini Aeolosaurini is an extinct clade of titanosaurian dinosaurs known from the Cretaceous period of Argentina and Brazil. Rodrigo M. Santucci and Antonio C. de Arruda-Campos (2011) in their cladistic analysis found ''Aeolosaurus'', ''Gondwanatitan'', ...

, which they recover as a subclade of

Rinconsauria Rinconsauria is an extinct clade of giant titanosaurian sauropods known from the late Cretaceous period of Argentina. Systematics Rinconsauria was coined by Calvo et al. (2007) to include their new titanosaur ''Muyelensaurus'' and the previously ...

, different from other cladograms. Their cladogram is shown below.

Paleoenvironment

The holotype locality, the Quebrada de Santo Domingo site, preserves one of the largest concentrations of titanosaur eggs in the world. The describing authors suggest some connection with either ''Bravasaurus'' or its contemporary '' Punatitan'', which was described in the same paper.

References

Lithostrotians Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of South America Cretaceous Argentina Fossil taxa described in 2020 {{sauropodomorph-stub