''Rocasaurus'' (meaning "

General Roca A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED O ...

lizard") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

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 ...

ian sauropod that lived in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

. ''Rocasaurus'' was discovered in

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 ...

in 2000, within the

Allen Formation The Allen Formation is a geological formation in Argentina whose strata date back to the Late Cretaceous (middle Campanian to early Maastrichtian.Salgado et al., 2007 Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formati ...

which is dated to be middle Campanian to early Maastrichtian in age (75 to 70 million years ago in 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'', ...

). This genus grew up to long, making it one of the smaller sauropods. It seems to be closely related to saltasaurid dinosaurs, like ''

Saltasaurus ''Saltasaurus'' (which means "lizard from Salta") is a genus of saltasaurid dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous period of Argentina. Small among sauropods, though still heavy by the standards of modern creatures, ''Saltasaurus'' was characterized by ...

'' and ''

Neuquensaurus ''Neuquensaurus'' (meaning "Neuquén lizard") is a genus of saltasaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous, about 80 million years ago in Argentina and Uruguay in South America. Its fossils were recovered from outcrops of the Ana ...

''. 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 specime ...

, ''Rocasaurus muniozi'', was formally described by

Leonardo Salgado Leonardo Salgado is an Argentinean palaeontologist with a special interest in dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period and other investigations of the palaeobiology of fossil bearing geological formations. Salgado is the leading or coauthor of several t ...

and Azpilicueta in 2000.Salgado, L. and C. Azpilicueta. (2000). Un nuevo saltasaurino (Sauropoda, Titanosauridae) de la provincia de Río Negro (Formacíon Allen, Cretácico Superior), Patagonia, Argentina. ''Ameghiniana'' 37 (3):259-264. New specimens were described in 2021.

References

External links

Dinosaur Mailing List entry which announces the discovery of ''Rocasaurus''
Saltasaurids Campanian life Maastrichtian life Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of South America Allen Formation Fossils of Argentina Fossil taxa described in 2000 {{Sauropodomorph-stub Cretaceous Argentina