BRUHATHKAYOSAURUS
a questionable colossal titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of India.
Pronunciation: brih-HUHT-kah-yo-SOR-us
Meaning: Huge-bodied lizard
Author/s: Yadagiri and Ayyasami (
1987)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Tamil Nadu, India
Discovery Chart Position: #330
Bruhathkayosaurus matleyi
(Matley's Huge-Bodied Lizard)Etymology
Bruhathkayosaurus is derived from the Sanskrit "bruhath" (huge) and "kaya" (body), and the Greek "sauros" (lizard), referring to its huge size, with a supposed shin two meters in length.
The
species epithet,
matleyi, honours British palaeontologist Charles Alfred Matley, who discovered many dinosaur fossils in India.
Discovery
The fossils of
Bruhathkayosaurus were discovered in the Kallemedu Formation (Ariyalur Group) near Kallamedu Village, Tiruchirappalli District, Tamil Nadu State, India, by P. Yadagiri of the Geological Survey of India in 1978.
The
holotype (GSI PAL/SR/20) consists of hip bones (ilium and ischium), leg bones (a partial thigh and shin), a forearm bone (radius), and a partial tail vertebra. Allegedly.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Maastrichtian
Age range: 71-66 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 44 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: 120 tons
Diet: Herbivore
Bruhathkayosaurus
matleyi
References
• Yadagiri P and Ayyasami K (1987) "A carnosaurian dinosaur from the Kallamedu Formation (Maestrichtian horizon), Tamilnadu".
In Sastry MVA, Sastry VV, Ramanujam CGK, Kapoor HM, Jagannatha Rao BR, Satsangi PP and Mathur UB (eds.) "Symposium on Three Decades of Development in Palaeontology and Stratigraphy in India". Volume 1. Precambrian to Mesozoic. Geological Society of India Special Publication 11(1): 523-528.
• Chatterjee S (1995) "The last dinosaurs of India".
The Dinosaur Report, Fall 1995: 12-18.
• Krause DW, O'Connor PM, Curry Rogers K, Sampson SD, Buckley GA and Rogers RR (2006) "Late Cretaceous terrestrial vertebrates from Madagascar: Implications for Latin American biogeography".
Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 93(2): 178-208.
• Galton PM and Ayyasami K (2017) "Purported latest bone of a plated dinosaur (Ornithischia: Stegosauria), a "dermal plate" from the Maastrichtian (Upper Cretaceous) of southern India".
Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen, 285(1): 91–96. DOI: 10.1127/njgpa/2017/0671.
• Pal S and Ayyasami K (2022) "The lost titan of Cauvery".
Geology Today, 38(3): 112-116. DOI: 10.1111/gto.12390.
• Paul GS and Asier Larramendi A (2023) "
Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains suggest the largest land animals were about as big as the greatest whales".
Lethaia, 56(2): 1-11. DOI: 10.18261/let.56.2.5.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
BRUHATHKAYOSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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