ADAMANTISAURUS
a plant-eating lithostrotian titanosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil.
Pronunciation: ad-am-AN-tee-SOR-us
Meaning: Adamantina lizard
Author/s: Santucci and Bertini (
2006)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: São Paulo, Brazil
Discovery Chart Position: #580
Adamantisaurus mezzalirai
The first known titanosaur fossil from Brazil's Bauru Group was a tail vertebra from the Adamantina Formation near the city of Colina, uncovered at the beginning of the twentieth century and described in 1913 by Pacheco, who misinterpreted it as belonging to a crocodile. But that isn't Adamantisaurus. The next were vertebral series (DGM 1487-R "Series A", DGM 1488-R "Series B" and DGM 1490-R ii "Series C"), found in the Adamantina Formation at Peirópolis in 1947–48. But those aren't Adamantisaurus, either. Being discovered in 1958 and mentioned by Mezzalira in 1959, Adamantisaurus was the third known Adamantina titanosaur and should have been the first sauropod from that formation to be officially named. But Antarctosaurus brasiliensis (Arid and Vizotto, 1971) and Gondwanatitan faustoi (Kellner and Azevedo, 1999) were both named earlier despite being discovered later. Heck, even a thigh and teeth from the Adamantina Formation (Mezzalira, 1966 and 1989), pelves from the Marília Formation (Campos and Kellner, 1999), a single osteoderm from Peirópolis (Azevedo and Kellner, 1998), and a fragmentary tail vertebra from the Alcântara Formation (Medeiros, 2002) all managed to generate more interest in Bauru Group titanosaurs and get themselves described first. But patience is a virtue.
(Mezzalira's Adamantina Lizard)Etymology
Adamantisaurus is derived from "Adamantina" (for the Adamantina Formation in the Bauru Group of São Paulo, Brazil)
and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The
species epithet,
mezzalirai, honours Sergio Mezzalira, the Brazilian geologist who originally found the specimen and first mentioned it in print.
Discovery
The remains of
Adamantisaurus were discovered in the Adamantina Formation, near the city of Flórida Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil, by Sergio Mezzalira, during the construction of the railway between Adamantina and Irapuru in 1958.
The
holotype (MUGEO 1282) is six tail vertebrae.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Maastrichtian
Age range: 71-66 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 14 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: 6 tons
Diet: Herbivore
Adamantisaurus
mezzalirai
References
• Mezzalira S (1959) "Nota preliminar sobre as recentes descobertas paleontológicas no Estado de São Paulo, no período 1958–59".
Notas Prévias do Instituto Geográfico e Geológico, 2: 1-7.
• Mezzalira S (1966) "Os fósseis do Estado de São Paulo".
Boletim do Instituto Geográ?co e Geológico, São Paulo, 45: 1–132.
• Arid FM and Vizotto LD (1971) "Antarctosaurus brasiliensis, um novo saurópodo do Cretáceo Superior do Sul do Brasil".
XXV Congresso Brasileiro de Paleontologia, São Paulo. Sociedade Brasileira de Paleontologia, São Paulo: 297–205.
• Mezzalira S (1989) "Os fósseis do Estado de São Paulo".
Instituto Geológico, São Paulo: 1-142.
• Azevedo SAK and Kellner AWA (1998) "A titanosaurid (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) osteoderm from the Upper Cretaceous of Minas Gerais, Brazil".
Boletim do Museu Nacional, 44: 1–6.
• Campos DA and Kellner AWA (1999) "On some sauropod (Titanosauridae) pelves from the continental Cretaceous of Brazil".
Page 143–166 in Tomida, Rich and Vickers-Rich (eds.) "Proceedings of the Second Gondwanan Dinosaur Symposium". National Science Museum, Tokyo.
• Kellner AWA and Azevedo SAK (1999) "A new sauropod dinosaur (Titanosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil".
Page 111–142 in Tomida, Rich and Vickers-Rich (eds.) "Proceedings of the Second Gondwanan Dinosaur Symposium". National Science Museum, Tokyo.
• Medeiros MA (2002) "Ocorrência de um saltasaurino (Dinosauria, Titanosauria) no Cenomaniano do Nordeste do Brasil".
VI Simpósio sobre o Cretáceo do Brasil, São Pedro. Universidade Estadual Paulista, Rio Claro: 99–102.
• Santucci RA and Bertini RJ (2006) "A new titanosaur from western São Paolo State, Upper Cretaceous Bauru Group, south-east Brazil".
Palaeontology, 49(1): 59–66. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2005.00527.x.
• Paul GS (2010) "
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs".
• Molina-Pérez R and Larramendi A (2020) "
Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: The Sauropods" [aka Dinosaur Facts and Figures: The Sauropods and Other Sauropodomorphs].
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
ADAMANTISAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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