Everything about Agustinia totally explained
Agustinia is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period of South America. Like all known sauropods, it was quadrupedal and herbivorous. Although some sauropods are known to have body armor, Agustinia's armor was unique even among sauropods. It had a series of wide, vertical spikes and plates down the center of its back, somewhat like the unrelated
Stegosaurus. Aside from the armor, very little is known about the
anatomy of
Agustinia. A
fibula (lower leg bone) has been recovered that's about 3 feet (895mm) long. When compared to the same bone in related dinosaurs, this indicates that
Agustinia may have been about 50 feet (15 meters) long.
The name
Agustinia honors the discoverer of the specimen, Agustin Martinelli. This dinosaur was originally named in a
1998 abstract written by famous
Argentine paleontologist Jose Bonaparte. The original generic name was
Augustia, which, as it turned out, was already
preoccupied by a
beetle (see also:
Megapnosaurus,
Protognathosaurus). Bonaparte changed the name to
Agustinia in a full paper published in
1999, which also introduced the family Agustiniidae. There is one named
species (
A. ligabuei), which is named in honor of Dr. Giancarlo Ligabue, a
philanthropist who provided financial support to the expedition which recovered the remains.
Agustinia was recovered from the
Lohan Cura Formation of
Neuquen Province in
Argentina, which is thought to date from the late
Aptian to
Albian stages of the
Early Cretaceous Period, between 116 and 100 million years ago.
Only fragmentary remains are known. These include fragments of
vertebrae from the back, hips, and tail regions of the
spinal column, and 9 of the oddly-shaped plates or spikes which were attached to those vertebrae. Parts of the lower hind limb were also recovered: a
fibula,
tibia, and 5
metatarsals. A
femur (thigh bone) was found at the site but was too fragmented to collect.
Because of its unusual features,
Agustinia was originally assigned to its own family,
Agustiniidae (Bonaparte, 1999). This family name hasn't come into wide acceptance.
Agustinia is difficult to classify because of its fragmentary nature, and because it exhibits features of both
diplodocoid and
titanosaurian
sauropods. Both groups are known in Early Cretaceous Argentina, so
Agustinia most likely belongs to one or the other, but until more complete remains are found, it'll be hard to know which one.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Agustinia'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://agustinia.totallyexplained.com">Agustinia Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
