''Panamericansaurus'' (meaning "

Pan American Energy Bridas Corporation is an Argentine independent oil and gas holding company based in Buenos Aires. Since March 2010 it is 50% owned by China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Operations Bridas Corporation was founded by the Bulgheroni family in ...

lizard") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

titanosauria Titanosaurs (or titanosaurians; members of the group Titanosauria) were a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, including genera from all seven continents. The titanosaurs were the last surviving group of long-necked sauropods, with taxa still thr ...

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger 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 ''creta'', ...

Period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, t ...

. The holotype is very similar to known fossil material of ''

Aeolosaurus ''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. ''Aeolosa ...

'', which ''Panamericansaurus'' is thought to be closely related to.

Discovery and naming

The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen( ...

''Panamericansaurus schroederi'' was named and described by

Jorge Orlando Calvo Jorge Orlando Calvo (27 April 1961 – 10 January 2023) was an Argentine geologist and paleontologist working for "Centro de Investigaciones Paleontológicas Lago Barreales" (National University of Comahue). Dr. Jorge Orlando Calvo was born in C ...

and Juan Domingo Porfiri in

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

. The generic name refers to the Pan American Energy company which financially supported the paleontological investigations. The specific name honours the Schroeder family on whose land the remains were found. The describers placed ''Panamericansaurus'' in a clade within the

Titanosauridae Lithostrotia is a clade of derived titanosaur sauropods that lived during the Early Cretaceous and Late Cretaceous. The group was defined by Upchurch ''et al.'' in 2004 as the most recent common ancestor of '' Malawisaurus'' and '' Saltasaurus ...

, the

Aeolosaurini Aeolosaurini is an extinct clade of titanosaurian dinosaurs known from the Cretaceous period of Argentina and Brazil. Rodrigo M. Santucci and Antonio C. de Arruda-Campos (2011) in their cladistic analysis found ''Aeolosaurus'', ''Gondwanatitan' ...

, of which also ''Aeolosaurus'' and ''

Gondwanatitan ''Gondwanatitan'' (meaning "giant from Gondwana") was a titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur. ''Gondwanatitan'' was found in Brazil, at the time part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, in the late Cretaceous Period (70 mya). Like some other sau ...

'' are also members. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

, MUCPv-417, was found in June 2003 in a layer of the

Allen Formation The Allen Formation is a geological formation in Argentina whose strata date back to the Late Cretaceous (middle Campanian to early Maastrichtian.Salgado et al., 2007 Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formati ...

(

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous Epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campani ...

Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian () is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the latest age (uppermost stage) of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series, the Cretaceous Period or System, and of the Mesozoic Era or Erathem. It spanned the interv ...

) near

San Patricio del Chañar San Patricio del Chañar is a town located in Añelo Department, in Neuquén Province, Argentina. Economy In San Patricio del Chañar agriculture is one of the most important activities. The main crop is grapes, used for the production of wine ...

, in

Neuquén Neuquén (; arn, Nehuenken) is the capital city of the Argentine province of Neuquén and of the Confluencia Department, located in the east of the province. It occupies a strip of land west of the confluence of the Limay and Neuquén rive ...

, Argentina. It consists of five tail vertebrae, a sacral vertebra, a left humerus,

haemal arch A haemal arch also known as a chevron, is a bony arch on the ventral side of a tail vertebra of a vertebrate. The canal formed by the space between the arch and the vertebral body is the haemal canal. A spinous ventral process emerging from the hae ...

es and rib fragments. The humerus is 123 centimetres long. The length of the holotype individual has been estimated at .

References

Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of South America Lithostrotians Fossil taxa described in 2010 Taxa named by Jorge O. Calvo Allen Formation {{Sauropodomorph-stub Cretaceous Argentina