Huallasaurus
Name:
Huallasaurus
(duck lizard).
Phonetic: Hu-al-lah-sor-us.
Named By: Sebastián Rozadilla, Federico Brissón
Egli,
Federico Agnolin, Alexis Mauro Aranciaga-Rolando &
Fernando
Emilio Novas - 2022.
Synonyms: Kritosaurus australis..
Classification: Chordata, Dinosauria,
Ornithischia, Ornithopoda, Hadrosauridae, Saurolophinae,
Kritosaurini.
Species: H. australis
(type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Uncertain.
Known locations: Argentina, Patagonia - Los
Alamitos Formation.
Time period: Late Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Partial remains.
The
naming
history of this dinosaur is somewhat convoluted. The fossils that
would go on to establish this genus were originally described in
1984, but as a species of Kritosaurus,
K. australis. As you
may have inferred front the species name, it was thought that a
southern population of Kritosaurus had been
discovered, other fossils
of the genus were only known from North America. However a new study
in 2010 (Prieto–Marquez & Salinas) considered K.
australis to actually represent a more fully grown form of
Secernosaurus,
an earlier named hadrosaurid dinosaur genus that had
been based upon the remains of a dinosaur that was likely not fully
grown. However by 2015 another study (Coria) noted several
differences between the fossils of what were once K.
australis and
those of Secernosaurus. A later study in 2022
(Rozadilla et al)
confirmed that not only were the K. australis
fossils different from
Secernosaurus, they were not likely a species of Kritosaurus
either.
Thus the creation of the Huallasaurus genus was
established.
Huallasaurus
has a
saurolophine hadrosaurid dinosaur that lived in South America during
the late Cretaceous. Though regarded as different to Kritosaurus,
Huallasaurus is still recognised as being very
similar, hence its
inclusion within the Kritosaurini group of
hadrosaurs. Like others of
its kind, Huallasaurus would have been a
herbivore capable of
browsing on a range of vegetation.
Further reading
- La Formación Los
Alamitos (Campaniano-Maastrichtiano) del sudeste de Rio Negro,
con descripcion de Kritosaurus australis n. sp.
(Hadrosauridae). Significado paleogeografico de los vertebrados.
- Revista de la Asociación Geológica Argentina (in Spanish).
39 (3–4): 284–299. J. Bonaparte, M. R. Franchi,
J. E. Powell & E. Sepulveda - 1984.
- A
re–evaluation of Secernosaurus koerneri and Kritosaurus
australis
(Dinosauria, Hadrosauridae) from the Late Cretaceous of
Argentina.- Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 30 (3):
813–837. - Alberto Prieto–Marquez & Guillermo C.
Salinas - 2010.
- South American hadrosaurs: considerations on their diversity.
- Rodolfo Coria - 2015.
-
A new hadrosaurid (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) from the Late
Cretaceous of northern Patagonia and the radiation of South American
hadrosaurids. - Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 19
(17): 1207–1235. - Sebastián Rozadilla, Federico Brissón
Egli, Federico Agnolin, Alexis Mauro Aranciaga-Rolando &
Fernando Emilio Novas - 2022.
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