''Sektensaurus'' (meaning "island lizard", ''sekten'' meaning "island" in
Tehuelche) is a genus of
ornithopod
Ornithopoda () is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs, called ornithopods (), that started out as small, bipedal running grazers and grew in size and numbers until they became one of the most successful groups of herbivores in the Cretaceous world ...
dinosaur, possibly an
elasmaria
Elasmaria is a clade of ornithopods known from Cretaceous deposits in South America, Antarctica, and Australia that contains many bipedal ornithopods that were previously considered "hypsilophodonts".Madzia, Daniel; Boyd, Clint A.; Mazuch, Marti ...
n, from the
Late Cretaceous (
Campanian) of
Patagonia,
Argentina. Its remains were uncovered in the
fluvial
In geography and geology, fluvial processes are associated with rivers and streams and the deposits and landforms created by them. When the stream or rivers are associated with glaciers, ice sheets, or ice caps, the term glaciofluvial or fluviog ...
tuffs of the
Lago Colhué Huapí Formation in the
Golfo San Jorge Basin. 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.
* Ty ...
and only species is ''S. sanjuanboscoi''.
''Sektensaurus'' is the first non-hadrosauroid ornithopod of central Patagonia. The discovery of the genus increases the anatomical knowledge of ornithopods and adds new data on the compositions of dinosaur faunas that lived in Patagonia close to
Antarctica at the end of the Cretaceous.
See also
*
South Polar region of the Cretaceous
The South Polar region of the Cretaceous comprised the continent of East Gondwana–modern day Australia and Antarctica–a product of the break-up of Gondwana in the Cretaceous Period. The southern region, during this time, was much warmer than i ...
References
Ornithopods
Campanian life
Maastrichtian life
Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of South America
Cretaceous Argentina
Fossils of Argentina
Golfo San Jorge Basin
Fossil taxa described in 2019
Ornithischian genera
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