Agustinia
Name: Agustinia
(Named after Agustin Martinelli, the discoverer).
Phonetic: A-gus-tin-e-ah.
Named By: Jos� Bonaparte - 1999.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Diplodocoidea/Titanosauridae?
Species: A. ligabuei (type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Estimated 15 meters long.
Known locations: Argentina, Neuquen Province -
Lohan Cura Formation.
Time period: Aptian to Albian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Partial remains including a
fibula and tibia (bones of the lower hind leg), very fragmentary
femur (upper hind leg bone), five metatarsals, partial
vertebrae and the associated back armour of plates and spikes.
Like
with many sauropod
dinosaurs, Agustinia is
known from incomplete
remains. Some of these remains however revealed a startling
revelation in that this sauropod had what appeared to be armour along
its back similar in appearance to the plates of Stegosaurus,
a
herbivorous but completely different kind of dinosaur. This is in
particular reference to the plates that would have been on the back of
the neck of Agustinia, although these plates were
at a right angle
to how they would have been arranged in Stegosaurus
which means
that from the side they would have looked thin, but from the front
you would have seen the full shape. However, later studies now suggest
that this plates are actually fragments of the ribs and hips, and if
this is true, then Agustinia did not have armoured
plates.
The
phylogenetic position of Agustinia has been
difficult to establish as
the few bones known for the genus display a combination of diplodocid
and titanosaurid features. To make things even more difficult both of
these groups of dinosaurs are known to have roamed South America during
the Cretaceous. Agustinia was first named in
1998 as Augustia,
but this was later found to have already been used for another
creature, hence the change to Agustinia in 1999.
Further reading
- An armoured sauropod from the Aptian of northern Patagonia,
Argentina. - J. F. Bonaparte. In Proceedings of the Second Gondwanan
Dinosaur Symposium Tokyo: National Science Museum Monographs Y. Tomida,
T. H. Rich & P. Vickers-Rich (Eds). - 1999.
- Osteology of the Late Jurassic Portuguese sauropod dinosaur Lusotitan
atalaiensis (Macronaria) and the evolutionary history of
basal
titanosauriforms. - Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 168,
98–206. - P. D. Manion, P. Upchurch, R. N. Barnes & O. Mateus -
2013.
- Bone histology sheds light on the nature of the ‘dermal armor’ of the
enigmatic sauropod dinosaur Agustinia ligabuei
Bonaparte, 1999. - The
Science of Nature. 104 (1) - F. Bellardini & I. A. Cerda -
2017.
- Revisiting the Early Cretaceous sauropod Agustinia ligabuei
(Dinosauria: Diplodocoidea) from southern Neuqu�n Basin (Patagonia,
Argentina), with implications on the early evolution of
rebbachisaurids. - Historical Biology: An International Journal of
Paleobiology. - F. Bellardinia, R.A. Coria, G.J. Windholz, A.G.
Martinelli & M.A. Baiano - 2022.
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