''Tapuiasaurus'' (meaning " Tapuia lizard") is a

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 ...

titanosaur 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 ...

which lived during the

Lower Cretaceous Lower may refer to: * ''Lower'' (album), 2025 album by Benjamin Booker * Lower (surname) * Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) * Lower Wick Gloucestershire, England See also * Nizhny {{Disambiguation ...

period Period may refer to: Common uses * Period (punctuation) * Era, a length or span of time *Menstruation, commonly referred to as a "period" Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (o ...

(

Aptian The Aptian is an age (geology), age in the geologic timescale or a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early Cretaceous, Early or Lower Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or series (stratigraphy), S ...

age) in what is now Minas Gerais,

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

Discovery

Its fossils, including a partial

skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of most animals. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is a rigid outer shell that holds up an organism's shape; the endoskeleton, a rigid internal fra ...

with a nearly complete

skull The skull, or cranium, is typically a bony enclosure around the brain of a vertebrate. In some fish, and amphibians, the skull is of cartilage. The skull is at the head end of the vertebrate. In the human, the skull comprises two prominent ...

, have been recovered from the

Quiricó Formation The Quiricó Formation is a geological formation of the Areado Group in Minas Gerais, Brazil whose strata date back to the Early Cretaceous (Aptian The Aptian is an age (geology), age in the geologic timescale or a stage (stratigraphy), stage ...

of the São Francisco Basin in

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil, being the fourth largest state by area and the second largest in number of inhabitants with a population of 20,539,989 according to the 2022 Brazilian census, 2022 census. Located in ...

, eastern Brazil. This genus was named a team of researchers led by Hussam Zaher, including Diego Pol, Alberto B. Carvalho, Paulo M. Nascimento aka

Pirula (YouTuber) Paulo Miranda Nascimento (born August 14, 1981), more commonly known by the pseudonym Pirula or Pirulla, is a Brazilian paleontologist, YouTuber, zoologist, lecturer and a scientific disseminator. Nascimento obtained a bachelor's degree in ...

, Claudio Riccomini, Peter Larson, Rubén Juárez Valieri, Ricardo Pires Domingues, Nelson Jorge da Silva Jr. and Diógenes de Almeida Campos, in a

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

publication. The

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, 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 spe ...

, ''Tapuiasaurus macedoi,'' was also described in this study.

Classification

''Tapuiasaurus'' was originally classified as a member of the

Nemegtosauridae Nemegtosauridae is a family of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs based on their diplodocid-like skulls. Only three species are known: '' Nemegtosaurus'', '' Quaesitosaurus'' and possibly '' Tapuiasaurus'', each from the Cretaceous. History of cla ...

family by its original describers, but subsequent cladistic analyses have revealed a more complex relationship. Wilson ''et al.'' (2016) found that Tapuiasaurus falls outside the

Lithostrotia 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'' an ...

shade while Carballido ''et al.'' (2017) discovered a close relationship between Tapuiasaurus and the Gondwanan lithostrotians ''

Isisaurus ''Isisaurus'' (named after the Indian Statistical Institute) is a genus of titanosaurian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Lameta Formation of India and Pab Formation of Pakistan. The genus contains a single species, ''Isisaurus colberti''. Di ...

'' and ''

Rapetosaurus ''Rapetosaurus'' ( ) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur that lived in Madagascar from 70 to 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Only one species, ''Rapetosaurus krausei'', has been identified. Like other sauropod ...

,'' suggesting a distant connection to

Nemegtosaurus ''Nemegtosaurus'' (meaning 'Reptile from the Nemegt') was a sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now Mongolia. Measuring an estimated long and weighing , it was named after the Nemegt Basin in the Gobi Desert, where the ...

.Carballido, J.L.; Pol, D.; Otero, A.; Cerda, I.A.; Salgado, L.; Garrido, A.C.; Ramezani, J.; Cúneo, N.R.; Krause, J.M. (2017). "A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution among sauropod dinosaurs". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284 (1860): 20171219. .

References

{{Portal bar, Dinosaurs, Paleontology Lithostrotia Dinosaur genera Aptian dinosaurs Fossil taxa described in 2011 Dinosaurs of Brazil