a dacentrurine stegosaurid dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of Portugal, and maybe Spain.
Pronunciation: MEE-ruh-GAH-yuh
Meaning: for Miragaia
Author/s: Mateus
et al. (
2009)
Synonyms: See
below
First Discovery: Lourinhã, Portugal
Discovery Chart Position: #680
Miragaia longicollum
(Long-Necked Miragaia)
Etymology
Miragaia has quite a nifty possible double meaning. Firstly, it's named after the village and geological unit of Miragaia, where it was discovered. In addition, the stem
"Mira-" can be read as the feminine form of the Latin "mirus" (wonderful), while "Gaia" is the Greek goddess of
the Earth. Hence,
Miragaia could also mean "wonderful goddess of
the Earth"... but doesn't.
The
species epithet,
longicollum, from the Latin "longus" (long) and "collum" (neck), is a reference to its long neck.
Stegosaurus longispinus? (Gilmore, 1914)
Kentrosaurus longispinus? (Olshevsky and Ford, 1993)
Natronasaurus? (Ulansky, 2014)
Alcovasaurus longispinus? (Galton and Carpenter, 2016)
Discovery
The first remains of
Miragaia were discovered in the Sobral unit of the Lourinhã Formation (previously the Miragaia unit of the Sobral Formation), after the construction of a road between the villages of Miragaia and Sobral, in the municipality of Lourinhã, Portugal, by Rui Soares. The fossils were excavated and collected by the Museum of Lourinhã during two digging seasons in August 1999 and August 2001.
The
holotype (ML 433) consists of a partial skull (the first known, for a European stegosaurid), fifteen neck vertebrae with
associated ribs, two back vertebrae, both shoulder girdles and arms, four hand bones, twelve rib fragments, one chevron, one tail? spike and thirteen stegosaurid plates.
A juvenile specimen (ML 433-A), consisting of a partial pelvis and two back vertebrae, was found mingled with the holotype and assigned to
Miragaia as a paratype.
Another specimen (MG 4863), discovered at Atouguia da Baleia, Peniche, Portugal, that had been excavated in 1959 by Georges Zbyszewski but lay unprepared until 2015-17, was assigned to
Miragaia by Costa and Mateus in 2019.
This largely complete specimen, including elements from both the front and rear end, represents the most complete dinosaur ever found in Portugal.
• Gilmore CW (1914) "Osteology of the armored Dinosauria in the United States National Museum, with special reference to the genus
Stegosaurus".
Bulletin of the United States National Museum, 89: 1–143.
• Olshevsky G and Ford TL (1993) "The origin and evolution of the stegosaurs".
Kyoryugaku Saizensen (Dino-Frontline), Gakken Mook, 4: 65–103.
• Araújo R, Mateus O, Walen A and Christiansen N (2009) "
Preparation techniques applied to a stegosaurian dinosaur from Portugal".
Journal of Paleontological Techniques, 5: 1–23.
• Mateus O, Maidment SCR and Christiansen NA (2009) "A new long- necked "sauropod-mimic" stegosaur and the evolution of the plated dinosaurs".
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 276(1663): 1815–1821. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2008.1909.
• Cobos A, Royo-Torres R, Luque L, Alcalá L and Mampel L (2010) "An Iberian stegosaurs paradise: The Villar del Arzobispo Formation (Tithonian–Berriasian) in Teruel (Spain)".
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 293(1–2): 223–36. DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2010.05.024.
• Paul GS (2010) "
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs".
• Ulansky RE (2014) "
Evolution of the stegosaurs (Dinosauria; Ornithischia)".
Dinologia: 1-35 [in Russian].
• Galton P M and Carpenter K (2016) "The plated dinosaur
Stegosaurus longispinus Gilmore, 1914 (Dinosauria: Ornithischia; Upper Jurassic, western USA), type species of
Alcovasaurus n. gen".
Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen, 279(2): 185–208. DOI: 10.1127/njgpa/2016/0551.
• Costa F and Mateus O (2019) "Dacentrurine stegosaurs (Dinosauria): A new specimen of
Miragaia longicollum from the Late Jurassic of Portugal resolves taxonomical validity and shows the occurrence of the clade in North America".
PLOS ONE, 14(11): e0224263. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0224263.
• Lategano F, Conti S and Lozar F (2024) "
Miragaia tail biomechanics and defences. Evaluation of the tail mobility and resistance to loadings and collisions".
Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia, 130(2): 475-486. DOI: 10.54103/2039-4942/21688.
• Sánchez-Fenollosa S, Escaso F ad Cobos A (2024) "A new specimen of
Dacentrurus armatus Owen, 1875 (Ornithischia: Thyreophora) from the Upper Jurassic of Spain and its taxonomic relevance in the European stegosaurian diversity".
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society: zlae074. DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae074.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
MIRAGAIA :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/MIRAGAIA›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
