Welcome to Agustinia
Name Definition
Agustinia is named after Agustin Martinelli who discovered the holotype specimen
Name Given By
José Bonaparte, 1999
Location
Lohan Cura Formation in the Neuquen Province, Argentina
Classification
Dinosauria, Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Sauropoda, Eusauropoda, Neosauropoda, Macronaria, Somphospondyli
Size
based on bone size comparison with other titanosaurs, Agustinia is somewhere around 15 meters long
Temporal Range
Aptian - Albian stages of the early Cretaceous, ~116 - 108 million years ago
Ecological niche
large herbivore
Species/Sub Species
A. ligabuei
Diet
Most sauropods are tall enough to reach tree leaves, making Agustinia able to eat these plants without competition from other herbivores
Introduction
Agustinia is a genus of macronarian sauropods that lived in Argentina during the early Cretaceous. The genus name honors Agustin Martinelli who discovered the remains of Agustinia, while the species name, ligabuei, honors Giancarlo Ligabue, an Italian supporter of the 1997 expedition in the Lohan Cura Formation that resulted in the discovery of Agustinia. Because some sauropods reached truly gigantic sizes, it is unlikely that a complete sauropod skeleton will be found, and the same went for Agustinia. However, some of these remains started to suggest a distinguishing feature different from most sauropods, which was spiky osteoderms and spikes protruding from its back in a similar manner to those of the stegosaurids, although the plates were turned 90º which would mean that they would look thin from a side view, but at the front you would see they were much wider. However, some recent research has gone into the position of these plates and showed that these plates were actually more likely to have been fragmentary remains of the ribs and hip bones, and if this is true, then Agustinia’s plates would have actually been inside its body instead. Before this research, Agustinia was originally going to have made it into its own new family, the Agustiniidae, however, this is not widely accepted and Agustinia has been rather difficult to classify not only because of the partial nature of the remains, but also because these remains also display both titanosaurian and diplodocoid features. Most of these specimens suggest Agustinia is a member of the Somphospondyli clade, but given the current amount of fossil evidence, there is no way to accurately classify Agustinia beyond here. Agustinia was originally named Augustia in 1998, however it was discovered one year later that the name already belonged to a genus of beetle, so it had to be changed to Agustinia in 1999 to avoid any confusion. Besides Agustinia, 4 other genera of sauropods were discovered in the Lohan Cura Formation including Ligabuesaurus, Limaysaurus, Comahuesaurus, and an unknown rebbachisaurid.
