''Huallasaurus'' (meaning "duck lizard") is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

saurolophine Saurolophinae is a subfamily (biology), subfamily of hadrosaurid dinosaurs. It has since the mid-20th century generally been called the Hadrosaurinae, a group of largely non-crested hadrosaurs related to the crested sub-family Lambeosaurinae. How ...

hadrosaur Hadrosaurids (), also hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs, are members of the ornithischian family Hadrosauridae. This group is known as the duck-billed dinosaurs for the flat duck-bill appearance of the bones in their snouts. The ornithopod fami ...

from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

Los Alamitos Formation The Los Alamitos Formation is a geological Formation (geology), formation of the North Patagonian Massif in Rio Negro Province, northwestern Patagonia, Argentina, whose strata date back to the Late Cretaceous (Campanian, Late Campanian to Maastri ...

Patagonia Patagonia () is a geographical region that includes parts of Argentina and Chile at the southern end of South America. The region includes the southern section of the Andes mountain chain with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and glaciers ...

in Argentina. The

type Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * ...

and only species is ''H. australis''. Originally named as a species of ''

Kritosaurus ''Kritosaurus'' is an incompletely known genus of hadrosaurid (duck-billed) dinosaur. It lived about 74.5-66 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous of North America. The name means "separated lizard" (referring to the arrangement of the cheek ...

'' in 1984, it was long considered a

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...

of ''

Secernosaurus ''Secernosaurus'' (meaning "severed lizard") is a genus of herbivorous dinosaur. ''Secernosaurus'' was a hadrosaur, a "duck-billed" dinosaur which lived during the Late Cretaceous. ''Secernosaurus'' and its close relatives lived in South America, ...

'' before being recognized as its own distinct genus in a 2022 study, different from other members of Kritosaurini.

Discovery

The generic name, "''Huallasaurus''," combines "hualla," the

Mapudungun Mapuche ( , ; from 'land' and 'people', meaning 'the people of the land') or Mapudungun (from 'land' and 'speak, speech', meaning 'the speech of the land'; also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu) is either a language isolate or member of the s ...

word for "duck," and the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

"sauros," meaning "lizard." The specific name, "''australis''," is derived from the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

"australis," meaning "southern," after the discovery of the holotype specimen in southern Argentina.

Classification

Rozadilla ''et al''. (2022) named ''Huallasaurus'' and the closely related ''

Kelumapusaura ''Kelumapusaura'' (meaning "red earth lizard") is a genus of saurolophine hadrosaur from the Late Cretaceous Allen Formation in what is now Patagonia in Argentina. The type and only species is ''K. machi'', known from a bonebed of various individ ...

'', recovering them in a clade of entirely South American saurolophines. In the 2023

description Description is any type of communication that aims to make vivid a place, object, person, group, or other physical entity. It is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as ''modes of discourse''), along with exposition, argumentation, and narr ...

of the South American

hadrosauroid Hadrosauroidea is a clade or superfamily of ornithischian dinosaurs that includes the "duck-billed" dinosaurs, or Hadrosauridae, and all dinosaurs more closely related to them than to ''Iguanodon''. Their remains have been recovered in Asia, Euro ...

'' Gonkoken'', Alarcón-Muñoz ''et al''. recovered similar results, implementing a modified version of the phylogenetic matrix of Rozadilla ''et al''. They named the clade containing ''Huallasaurus'', ''Kelumapusaura'', and other South American saurolophines as the

Austrokritosauria Saurolophinae is a subfamily of hadrosaurid dinosaurs. It has since the mid-20th century generally been called the Hadrosaurinae, a group of largely non-crested hadrosaurs related to the crested sub-family Lambeosaurinae. However, the name Hadros ...

, recovering it as the

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

to the Kritosaurini. The results of their phylogenetic analyses of Saurolophinae are displayed in the

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

below:

Paleoecology

''Huallasaurus'' is known from the Late Cretaceous

Río Negro Province Río Negro (, ''Black River'') is a province of Argentina, located in northern Patagonia. Neighboring provinces are from the south clockwise Chubut, Neuquén, Mendoza, La Pampa and Buenos Aires. To the east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Its cap ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. ''

Aeolosaurus rionegrinus ''Aeolosaurus'' (; "Aeolus' lizard") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. Like most sauropods, it would have been a quadrupedal herbivore with a long neck and tail. ''Aeolosau ...

'', a titanosaurian sauropod, has also been named from this formation.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q111015270 Saurolophinae Dinosaur genera Maastrichtian dinosaurs Los Alamitos Formation Taxa named by José Bonaparte Taxa named by Fernando Novas Taxa named by Jaime Powell Fossil taxa described in 1984 Fossil taxa described in 2022 Dinosaurs of Argentina