Fossilized stays ticket in Patagonia, Argentina encourage in 2009 signify a unusual genus and species of plant-piquant dinosaur that belonged to a neighborhood known as Rebbachisauridae.
Campananeyen fragilissimus. Picture credit: Fundación Azara.
The newly-chanced on dinosaur species lived in Patagonia between ninety nine to 96 million years ago (Late Cretaceous epoch).
Dubbed Campananeyen fragilissimus, the feeble plant-eater used to be an early member of Rebbachisauridae, a neighborhood of diplodocoid sauropods that assorted totally on the supercontinent Gondwana between the Early and Late Cretaceous.
“Rebbachisauridae is recovered as the basal-most neighborhood of Diplodocoidea,” said Dr. Lucas Lerzo, a paleontologist with the Fundación Azara – Universidad Maimónides and CONICET, and his colleagues.
“Even if the inferred starting attach of diplodocoid sauropods is within the Late Decrease to Early Middle Jurassic, it’s miles no longer until the Decrease Cretaceous that rebbachisaurid sauropods seem within the fossil document, with a height of fluctuate on the dwell of the history of the family within the Early Upper Cretaceous.”
“Rebbachisauridae is characterised by a extremely pneumatized skeleton which deeply invades the axial skeleton and the pelvic girdle.”
“They present unusual functions within the dorsal vertebrae no longer reported in any assorted sauropod.”
The postcranial stays of Campananeyen fragilissimus were easy in 2009 from the Candeleros Formation in Barda Atravesada de Las Campanas, Neuquén Province, Argentina.
They were chanced on along with the fossils of small theropod and rebbachisaurid dinosaurs, a turtle and a lizard.
The team’s prognosis reveals that Campananeyen fragilissimus is closely connected to Zapalasaurus, Sidersaura and a specimen from the La Amarga Formation.
“The unusual rebbachisaurid is recovered as the sister taxon of Sidersaura due the presence of procoelous posterior caudal vertebrae and dorsoventrally flattened posterior caudal centra,” the researchers said.
“Campananeyen fragilissimus items an outrageous pneumatization of the sacral stutter with an autapomorphic dorsal alar arm of the sacral transverse processes.”
“In a roundabout way, the phylogenetic prognosis helps a South American starting attach for Rebbachisauridae and an early diversification to Africa and Europe by the Barremian-Aptian as previously urged.”
The discovery of Campananeyen fragilissimus is reported in a paper within the journal Ancient Biology.
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Lucas N. Lerzo et al. All of them floated within the cretaceous: unusual rebbachisaurid (Sauropoda, Diplodocoidea) with a extremely pneumatized skeleton from the Upper Cretaceous (decrease Cenomanian) of Patagonia, Argentina. Ancient Biology, published on-line August 13, 2024; doi: 10.1080/08912963.2024.2383708
