Bonitasaura
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Extinct (fossil)
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| Bonitasaura salgadoi Apesteguía, 2003 |
Bonitasaura salgadoi is a titanosaurian dinosaur hailing from uppermost layers of the Late Cretaceous Bajo de la Carpa Formation, Neuquen Group, located in Río Negro Province, Northwestern Patagonia, Argentina. The remains, consisting of a partial sub-adult skeleton jumbled in a small area of fluvial sandstone, including lower jaw with teeth, partial vertebrae series and limb bones, were described by Apesteguía in a short communication in mid-2004.
The etymology of the generic name refers to the fossil quarry’s name, “La Bonita”, while the specific epithet pays homage to Leonardo Salgado, renowned Argentinian palaeontologist.
Bonitasaura is a 9-meter-long sauropod with a diplodocid-like skull, the lower jaw characterized by a sharp vascularized ridge immediately posterior and concomitant to the reduced anterior tooth row. This ridge supported in life a sharp keratinous sheath that paired with a probable similar zone in the upper jaw, which worked much like a guillotine to crop vegetation raked by the peg-like front teeth. This animal had a rather short neck and robust neural arches on the cranial dorsal vertebrae for muscle attachment, indicating the neck’s use in vigorous exertions, probably during feeding.
B. salgadoi is further evidence that, after a purported extinction of diplodocid sauropods, some lines of titanosaurian evolution converged with them, exhibiting low long skulls without the characteristic nasal arches of other macronarians (such as Brachiosaurus or Argentinosaurus) and lower jaws with squared symphysis and comb-like teeth, reversed limb proportions, being the humerus shorter than the femur and rudimentary whiplash tails. This find also elucidates on some problematic aspects of Antarctosaurus, sometimes viewed as a chimera of a titanosaurian cranium and postcrania and a diplodocid jaw, since basal diplodocids are coeval.
[edit] References
Sebastián Apesteguía. (September 2004). Bonitasaura salgadoi gen. et sp. nov.: a beaked sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia. Naturwissenschaften. 91:493–497
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