GONDWANATITAN
a plant-eating titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Brasil.
Pronunciation: gon-DWAHN-uh-TIE-tuhn
Meaning: Gondwana Giant
Author/s: Kellner and de Azevedo (
1999)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Sao Paulo, Brazil
Discovery Chart Position: #450
Gondwanatitan faustoi
(Fausto's Gondwana lizard)Etymology
Gondwanatitan is derived from "Gondwana" (the southern-most of two
supercontinents [the northern-most was Laurasia] which Brazil was part of during the Late Cretaceous) and the Greek "titan" (giant). Gondwana, aka "Gondwanaland" (land of the Gonds), was named by Austrian scientist Eduard Suess for an area of southern India that is known in Sanskrit as "gondavana" (forest of the Gonds) after the Dravidian peoples (the Gonds or Gondi) who live there.
The
species epithet,
faustoi (FOW-stoh-ie), honours Fausto L. de Souza Cunha, former curator at the Museu Nacional/UFRJ, who collected the type specimen.
Discovery
The remains of
Gondwanatitan were discovered at Myzobuchi Farm in the Adamantina Formation, near the city of Alvares Machado, Sao Paulo State, southern Brazil, by Yoshitoshi Myzobuchi in 1983.
The
holotype (MN 4111-V, housed at Rio de Janeiro's Museu Nacional) is a partial skeleton lacking a skull.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Santonian
Age range: 86-84 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: ?
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Herbivore
References
• Kellner AWA and de Azevedo SAK (1999) "A new sauropod dinosaur (Titanosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil"
in Y. Tomida, T.H. Rich and P. Vickers-Rich "Proceedings of the Second Gondwanan Dinosaur Symposium" - Issue 15 of National Science Museum monographs.
• Tidwell V, Carpenter K and Meyer S (2001) "New Titanosauriform (Sauropoda) from the Poison Strip Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation (Lower Cretaceous), Utah". In Tanke and Carpenter (eds.) "
Mesozoic Vertebrate Life".
• Brum AS, Bandeira KLN, Sayão JM, Campos DA amd Kellner AWA (2022)
"Microstructure of axial bones of lithostrotian titanosaurs (Neosauropoda: Sauropodomorpha) shows extended fast-growing phase".
Cretaceous Research 105220.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2022.105220.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
GONDWANATITAN :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/GONDWANATITAN›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
