Pronunciation: ee-JIP-toe-SOR-us
Meaning: Egyptian lizard
Author/s: Stromer (1932)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Marsah Matruh, Egypt
Discovery Chart Position: #160
Aegyptosaurus baharijensis
Aegyptosaurus is a named for its place of discovery: Egypt. Obviously, there is no "A" in Egypt. And the customary Greek term from which its name derives (Aigyptos) doesn’t have an "E". Heck, the Egyptian alphabet didn't bother with vowels at all. But this Late Cretaceous sauropod is no stranger to mystery, and the odd extra letter is the least of its worries.
The vertebrae and limb bones that would become Aegyptosaurus were found at Egypt's Bahariya Oasis by Richard Markgraf, a fossil-finder of Baron Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach, way back between 1910 to c.1912, so it isn’t unreasonable to assume that palaeontologists have spent many a year scrutinizing them and compiling information to share with the world. They haven’t. But, to be fair, there was a slight hitch. Stromer had carted the fossils back to Germany in 1915 for study, and they were safe and sound until 1944, when—POW!—WWII Allied forces accidentally bombed their Munich museum home while aiming for the train station on April 25th, and all of its fossils, including those of Aegyptosaurus and Spinosaurus, went up in smoke. With new remains a little shy of presenting themselves, the Baron's many-decades-old notes have had to be relied upon to garner what is known, but sadly, what is known is not a lot.
We know that Aegyptosaurus is a titanosaur, and we know that Titan means "giant" but Aegyptosaurus was not. At around sixteen meters long and a fairly modest fourteen tons in weight, you don't need to leave Egypt to find a bigger one: Paralititan was thrice the weight and almost twice as long. We also know that its remains include an unusually long humerus, very similar to that of the same area's Giraffatitan—the "giraffe giant"—which, confusingly, isn't a titanosaur but a brachiosaurid.
With so much uncertainty surrounding Aegyptosaurus, geologists from Pennsylvania felt compelled to travel back to Bahariya in 1999 and were so committed to retracing Stromer's steps that they painstakingly matched descriptions from his notes to actual landmarks as they went along. Remarkably, they managed to pinpoint some of his quarries and discovered a hotchpotch of remnants belonging to turtles, crocodiles, gastropods, possibly Spinosaurus and, just maybe, Aegyptosaurus. That was eleven years ago as of 2010, and we still haven't seen hide nor hair of new info. No news is often good news but, we have a sneaking suspicion, not on this occasion.
The vertebrae and limb bones that would become Aegyptosaurus were found at Egypt's Bahariya Oasis by Richard Markgraf, a fossil-finder of Baron Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach, way back between 1910 to c.1912, so it isn’t unreasonable to assume that palaeontologists have spent many a year scrutinizing them and compiling information to share with the world. They haven’t. But, to be fair, there was a slight hitch. Stromer had carted the fossils back to Germany in 1915 for study, and they were safe and sound until 1944, when—POW!—WWII Allied forces accidentally bombed their Munich museum home while aiming for the train station on April 25th, and all of its fossils, including those of Aegyptosaurus and Spinosaurus, went up in smoke. With new remains a little shy of presenting themselves, the Baron's many-decades-old notes have had to be relied upon to garner what is known, but sadly, what is known is not a lot.
We know that Aegyptosaurus is a titanosaur, and we know that Titan means "giant" but Aegyptosaurus was not. At around sixteen meters long and a fairly modest fourteen tons in weight, you don't need to leave Egypt to find a bigger one: Paralititan was thrice the weight and almost twice as long. We also know that its remains include an unusually long humerus, very similar to that of the same area's Giraffatitan—the "giraffe giant"—which, confusingly, isn't a titanosaur but a brachiosaurid.
With so much uncertainty surrounding Aegyptosaurus, geologists from Pennsylvania felt compelled to travel back to Bahariya in 1999 and were so committed to retracing Stromer's steps that they painstakingly matched descriptions from his notes to actual landmarks as they went along. Remarkably, they managed to pinpoint some of his quarries and discovered a hotchpotch of remnants belonging to turtles, crocodiles, gastropods, possibly Spinosaurus and, just maybe, Aegyptosaurus. That was eleven years ago as of 2010, and we still haven't seen hide nor hair of new info. No news is often good news but, we have a sneaking suspicion, not on this occasion.
[Egypt Lizard from Bahariya]Etymology
Aegyptosaurus is derived from the Greek "Aigyptos" (Egypt) and "sauros" (lizard).The species epithet, baharijensis, is derived from "Bahariya" (the formation in which it was found) and the Latin "-ensis" (from). ZooBank registry: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:6C9B6A11-5E43-4F48-B84E-A509616ECE8A.
Discovery
The remains of Aegyptosaurus were discovered in the Baharija (aka Bahrija) Formation at Marsa Matruh, 524km northwest of Egypt's capital Cairo, by Richard Markgraf, working for Ernst Stromer, between 1910 and c.1912.
The Holotype (1912VIII61) consists of three caudal (tail) vertebrae, a partial scapula (shoulder blade), and some limb bones.
In 2006, Albert-Félix de Lapparent assigned fossils to Aegyptosaurus from three sites in Niger: tail vertebrae, the end of a rib and two partial foot bones from Mount Iguallala, one tail vertebra from In Gall, and two tail vertebrae from In Abangarit.
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• Weishampel DB, Le Loeuff J, Coria RA, Gomani EMP, Zhao X, Xu X, Barrett PM, Sahni A and Noto C (2004) "Dinosaur distribution (Early Cretaceous, Africa)". Page 571-573 in Weishampel, Dodson and Osmólska (eds.) "
