Algoasaurus

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Algoasaurus
Temporal range:
Ma
Femur, vertebra and scapula (holotype)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Clade: Saurischia
Clade: †Sauropodomorpha
Clade: †Sauropoda
Clade: †Neosauropoda
Genus: †Algoasaurus
Broom, 1904
Species:
†A. bauri
Binomial name
†Algoasaurus bauri
Broom, 1904

Algoasaurus (

Despatch. Only one species, A. bauri, is known.[1][2]

Discovery and naming

The holotype, a cervical

Despatch, Eastern Cape which exposed part of the Upper Kirkwood Formation[3] by workmen who did not recognize them as dinosaur specimens, so many of the bones, probably including the rest of the once near-complete holotype, were made into bricks and thus destroyed;[1] it is possible that bricks in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality may still contain parts of the Algoasaurus holotype. According to Broom (1904), the Port Elizabeth Museum
collected "a few fragments of vertebrae and ribs" during another attempt to collect any remaining bones at the site.

The type species, A. bauri, was named by Robert Broom in 1904 and he likened Algoasaurus to Brontosaurus and Diplodocus.[1] Broom gave much of his fossil collection to the American Museum of Natural History in 1913, including the ungual phalanx from the holotype, listed as specimen AMNH FR 5631.[2]

Canudo & Salgado (2003) and Ibiricu et al. (2012) both considered Algoasaurus to have belonged to

Iziko Museum in Cape Town to possibly be the lost caudal vertebra pertaining to the holotype or possibly another specimen of Algoasaurus unrelated to the holotype,[3]
but SAM-PK-K1500 is yet to be described in detail, so it can not yet be confidently assigned to any genus.

Description

The animal may have been around 9 m (30 ft) long when it died,[6] although this can not be confirmed as the holotype is very fragmentary. Before it was lost, the femur was estimated to have been up to 50 centimetres (20 in) when complete.[1]

Classification

Algoasaurus was a

Titanosauridae,[7][8] there is no evidence for this, and recent reviews have considered it to be an indeterminate sauropod.[9][10] It was then believed to have been a member of Rebbachisauridae[4][5] until it was reclassified in 2016 as an indeterminate eusauropod.[3]

Paleoenvironment

Sedimentological analysis of the holotype assemblage suggests it came from a horizon transitioning into a drier climate.[11] Other animals from the Kirkwood Formation include the iguanodontian Iyuku, the stegosaur Paranthodon, the ornithomimosaur Nqwebasaurus, and several other unnamed dinosaurs.

References

  1. ^ a b c d Broom, R. (1904). On the occurrence of an opisthocoelian dinosaur (Algoasaurus Bauri) in the Cretaceous beds of South Africa. Geological Magazine, decade 5, 1(483):445-447.
  2. ^ a b Broom, R. (1915). Catalogue of types and figured specimens of fossil vertebrates in the American Museum of Natural History. II.–Permian, Triassic and Jurassic reptiles of South Africa. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 25(2):105–164.
  3. ^
    ISSN 0195-6671
    .
  4. ^ a b Canudo, J. I., and L. Salgado. (2003). Los dinosaurios del Neocomiense (Cretácico Inferior) de la Península Ibérica y Gondwana occidental: implicaciones biogeograficas. Pages 251–268 in F. Pérez-Lorente, editor. Dinosaurios y Otros Reptiles Mesozoicos de España. Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, Logroño, Spain.
  5. ^ a b Ibiricu, L. M., G. A. Casal, M. C. Lamanna, R. D. Martínez, J. D. Harris, and K. J. Lacovara. (2012). The southernmost records of Rebbachisauridae (Sauropoda: Diplodocoidea), from early Late Cretaceous deposits in central Patagonia. Cretaceous Research 34:220–232.
  6. ISBN 0-679-41770-2
    .
  7. ISBN 0-89464-985-X
    .
  8. ^ Steel, R. (1970). Saurischia. Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie/Encyclopedia of Paleoherpetology. Part 14. Gustav Fischer Verlag:Stuttgart p. 1-87.
  9. ISBN 0-520-06727-4
    .
  10. ISBN 0-520-24209-2
    .
  11. S2CID 250730794
    .
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