aragosaurus

Posts Tagged ‘aragosaurus’

Giant From Spain 15 MY Older

A research group from Aragon, that has the same name as the first Aragosaurus ischiaticus dinosaur discovered 25 years ago in Teruel, reveals that it lived 15 million years earlier than originally believed. Its new dating means that it was the ancestor of the Titanosauriforms, which includes the biggest dinosaurs.
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Tags: aragosaurus, cretaceous, dino, dinosaur, dinosaurus, europe, fossil, giant, herbivore, longneck, planteater, sauropod |

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Aragosaurus

Name: “Aragon lizard”

Length: 18 m

Height: 5 m

Weight: 28 tons

Diet: herbivore

Time: Cretaceous (130-120 MYA)

Location: Europe (Spain)

Dinosaur stuff

Aragosaurus (meaning “Aragon lizard”) was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous period of Galve, Teruel, in the province of Aragon, Spain.

Aragosaurus was a large, quadrupedal plant-eating (herbivorous) dinosaur, which lived about 130-120 million years ago, in the Hauterivian-Barremian. It was about 60 ft (18 m) in length and about 28000 kg in weight.

Like other sauropods, it had a long neck, a long powerful tail, a small head and a bulky body. It was broadly similar to Camarasaurus. It is represented by a partial fossil, which was found in Spain and was named by Sanz, Buscalioni, Casanovi and Santafe in 1987. The type species is A. ischiaticus. Like Camarasaurus, Aragosaurus probably had a short, compact skull and a moderately long neck. The teeth were large and wide, and would have been useful for slicing through the leaves and branches of tall conifer trees. The forelimbs were only a little shorter than the hind limbs, and the tail was long and muscular.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Sauropodomorpha

Infraorder: Sauropoda

Family: Camarasauridae

Genus: Aragosaurus

Species: A. ischiaticus

Binomial name: Aragosaurus ischiaticus