''Muyelensaurus'' (meaning "Muyelen lizard", after an indigenous name for the Colorado River in Argentina) is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

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 ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. It was more slender than other titanosaurs. Fossils have been recovered from the

Plottier Formation The Plottier Formation is a geologic formation that outcrops in the Argentine Patagonian provinces of Río Negro and Neuquén. It is the younger of two formations belonging to the Río Neuquén Subgroup within the Neuquén Group of the Neuquén ...

in the

Neuquén Neuquén (; arn, Nehuenken) is the capital city of the Argentine province of Neuquén and of the Confluencia Department, located in the east of the province. It occupies a strip of land west of the confluence of the Limay and Neuquén rivers w ...

province of

Patagonia Patagonia () refers to a geographical region that encompasses the southern end of South America, governed by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and gl ...

. 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 ''M. pecheni''.''Muyelensaurus''
at

Fossilworks Fossilworks is a portal which provides query, download, and analysis tools to facilitate access to the Paleobiology Database The Paleobiology Database is an online resource for information on the distribution and classification of fossil animals ...

.org The name ''Muyelensaurus'' first appeared in a 2007 paper by

Argentine Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...

paleontologists Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

Jorge Calvo of the Universidad Nacional del Comahue and Bernardo González Riga of the Laboratorio de Paleovertebrados, and

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 ...

ian paleontologist Juan Porfiri of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

Classification

The cladogram below follows Franca ''et al.'' (2016), placing ''Muyelensaurus'' as a basal

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 ...

n. The cladogram below follows Mocho ''et al.'' (2019), this time placing ''Muyelensaurus'' within

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 ...

.Mocho P, Páramo A, Escaso F, Marcos-Fernández F, Vidal D, Ortega F. 2019. Titanosaurs from Lo Hueco (Campanian-Maastrichtian) reveal new information about the evolutionary history of European titanosaurs, pp. 111. In: The Palaeontological Association (ed.), 63rd Annual Meeting, 15th–21st December 2019, University of Valencia, Spain, Programme Abstracts, AGM papers

References

Bibliography

* Calvo, J.O.; González-Riga, B.J.; and Porfiri, J.D. (2007) "A new titanosaur sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina." ''Arquivos do Museu Nacional'', Rio de Janeiro 65(4):485-50
PDF

External links

South American sauropods
Lithostrotians Coniacian life Santonian life Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of South America Cretaceous Argentina Fossils of Argentina Portezuelo Formation Fossil taxa described in 2007 Taxa named by Jorge O. Calvo {{Sauropodomorph-stub