Topic summary
Augustasaurus hagdorni
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Augustasaurus.
Discovery and naming
The first known fossil of Augustasaurus was discovered in 1993 in Muller Canyon, in the Augusta Mountains located in Nevada, United States. It was excavated in the Fossil Hill Member of the Favret Formation, a site dating from the Late Anisian to the Middle Triassic. The fossil consists of a partial skeleton, cataloged as FMNH PR 1974, having been partly destroyed due to weathering. After analysis, paleontologists Paul Martin Sander, Olivier Cedric Rieppel and Hugo Bucher established it as the holotype of a new genus and species under the name Augustasaurus hagdorni. The genus name is a combination of Augusta and the Ancient Greek word σαῦρος (saûros, "lizard"), all meaning "Augusta lizard", in reference to its type locality. The specific name is named in honor of the German paleontologist Hans Hagdorn, who participated with the description team in the research of numerous European marine reptiles that lived during the Triassic.