''Nullotitan'' (meaning "Nullo's giant", in honor of paleontologist Francisco Nullo) is a genus of lithostrotian
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 thr ...
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 ...
. The type and only species is ''Nullotitan glaciaris''. It was a contemporary of the ornithopod ''
Isasicursor
''Isasicursor'' (meaning "Isasi's runner" after Marcelo Pablo Isasi) is a genus of elasmarian ornithopod from the Chorrillo Formation from Santa Cruz Province in Argentina. The type and only species is ''Isasicursor santacrucensis''. It was a c ...
'' which was described in the same paper.
Discovery and naming
In 1980, geologist Francisco E. Nullo noticed the presence of sauropod bones on a hillside of the Estancia Alta Vista, south of the Centinela River in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina. He reported these finds to then-prominent paleontologist
José Bonaparte
José Fernando Bonaparte (14 June 1928 – 18 February 2020) was an Argentine paleontologist who discovered a plethora of South American dinosaurs and mentored a new generation of Argentine paleontologists
. One of the best-known Argentine paleo ...
. Bonaparte dug up a large cervical vertebra in 1981 and reported it as a cf. ''
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 ...
''. The old site was relocated and new excavations were carried out between 13 and 17 January and 14 to 19 March 2019, and a new site was discovered on the Estancia La Anita. A whole new fauna came to light on an area of . including six concentrations of bones that could be assigned to the original find, which was now recognized as a new sauropod species.
In 2019, the type species ''Nullotitan glaciaris'' was named and described by Fernando Emilio Novas, Federico Lisandro Agnolin, Sebastián Rozadilla, Alexis Mauro Aranciaga-Rolando, Federico Brisson-Egli, Matias Javier Motta, Mauricio Cerroni, Martín Dario Ezcurra, Agustín Guillermo Martinelli, Julia S. D´Angelo, Gerardo Alvarez -Herrera, Adriel Roberto Gentil, Sergio Bogan, Nicolás Roberto Chimento, Jordi Alexis García-Marsà, Gastón Lo Coco, Sergio Eduardo Miquel, Fátima F. Brito, Ezequiel Ignacio Vera, Valeria Susana Perez Loinaze, Mariela Soledad Fernández and Leonardo Salgado. The large number of authors is a consequence of the fact that the article described the entire fauna in which every expert contributed his part. The genus name honors Nullo and links his name to a Greek "''titan''", referring to the large race of powerful giants, the
Titans
In Greek mythology, the Titans ( grc, οἱ Τῑτᾶνες, ''hoi Tītânes'', , ''ho Tītân'') were the pre-Olympian gods. According to the ''Theogony'' of Hesiod, they were the twelve children of the primordial parents Uranus (Sky) and Gai ...
of Greek mythology. The species designation refers to the Perito Moreno Glacier that is visible from the site.
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 sever ...
, MACN-PV 18644; MPM 21542, is found in a layer of the lower