TALETA
a herbivorous lambeosaurine hadrosaurid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco.
Pronunciation: tuh-LAH-tuh
Meaning: Three
Author/s: Longrich
et al. (
2025)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Khouribga Province, Morocco
Discovery Chart Position: #1170
Taleta taleta
[Three Three]
Etymology
In Arabic, "taleta" means "three", in reference to it being the third duckbilled dinosaaur recovered from Couche III.
This is an example of a fairly rare naming convention known as tautonymy, where the genus and species names are identical, often to hammer home an important feature. Other examples of tautonymys are
Pica pica (Eurasian magpie), Vulpes vulpes (Red fox)
and Alces alces (Moose). Although allowed in zoological nomenclature, tautonymy is forbidden in botanical nomenclature.
Discovery
The remains of
Taleta were discovered in couche III marine phosphates of the Oulad Aboun Basin, in the the mines at Sidi Chennane, Khouribga Province, Morocco. The same locality has yielded the fossils of two other duck-billed dinosaurs,
Ajnabia odysseus and
Minqaria bata, but they all differ in features of the fossils that are comparable, particularly the teeth.
The
holotype (MHNM.KH.1557) consists of associated left and right upper jaw bones with in situ teeth.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Maastrichtian
Age range: 68-66 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: ?
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Herbivore
References
• Longrich NR, Suberbiola XP, Pyron RA and Jalil N-E (2020) "The first duckbill dinosaur (Hadrosauridae: Lambeosaurinae) from Africa and the role of oceanic dispersal in dinosaur biogeography".
Cretaceous Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2020.104678. [coins
Ajnabia.]
• Longrich NR, Pereda-Suberbiola X, Bardet N and Jalil N-E (2024) "A new small duckbilled dinosaur (Hadrosauridae: Lambeosaurinae) from Morocco and dinosaur diversity in the late Maastrichtian of North Africa".
Scientific Reports, 14: 3665. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-53447-9. [coins
Minqaria.]
• Longrich NR, Pereda-Suberbiola X, Bardet N and Jalil N-E (2025)
"A new hadrosaurid dinosaur from the late Maastrichtian Phosphates of Morocco provides evidence for an African radiation of lambeosaurines".
Gondwana Research (advance online publication).
DOI: 10.1016/j.gr.2025.05.006.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
TALETA :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
‹
http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/TALETA›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
