Saltasaurus

Chapter • Meet the dinosaur

Overview

Saltasaurus was a surprisingly small sauropod, roughly six to eight and a half metres long and somewhere between two and a half and seven tonnes in weight – closer to a big elephant than to giant relatives such as Argentinosaurus. It had a barrel-shaped body, a broad ribcage, short and sturdy limbs and a fairly short neck by sauropod standards. Its most remarkable feature, though, was its skin: the back and flanks were studded with hundreds of small bony nodules and a number of larger oval bony plates called osteoderms. This was the first clear evidence that sauropods could carry body armour, and the species name loricatus means "armoured". The animal walked on all fours with straight, pillar-like limbs and carried its tail clear of the ground – no sauropod dragged its tail. The hips and hind limbs were broad and stable, and several researchers have suggested that Saltasaurus could rear up on its hind legs using the tail as a prop to reach higher branches, although this remains debated. Trackways and bonebeds of related titanosaurs suggest herd living, and armoured adults may have shielded the far smaller juveniles from abelisaurid predators such as Abelisaurus and Carnotaurus. The teeth were narrow and peg-like and were restricted to the front of the jaws. They were good for raking and stripping vegetation but useless for chewing, so Saltasaurus swallowed ferns, conifer shoots and early flowering plants more or less whole and let a long, fermenting gut do the work. It was primarily a low browser, feeding from ground level up to a few metres. The species was described in 1980 by Argentine palaeontologists José Bonaparte and Jaime Powell, based on material from the Lecho Formation in Salta Province, north-western Argentina – hence the name, "Salta lizard". The find included remains of several individuals, including vertebrae, pelvic bones and the distinctive dermal armour, and it changed how palaeontologists view sauropods: since Saltasaurus, osteoderms have been recognised in several other titanosaurs.

Chapter • Where it lived

Habitat

Saltasaurus lived in the Late Cretaceous, during the Maastrichtian around 70–66 million years ago, in what is now north-western Argentina. Its fossils come mainly from the Lecho Formation in Salta Province, with additional material from neighbouring units in northern Argentina. The landscape was a semi-arid to seasonally wet river country with wide floodplains, meandering channels, open grassless plains covered by ferns and low conifers, and scattered stands of woodland. Dry spells alternated with heavy rains, and sandy riverbanks were used by titanosaurs to bury their eggs.

Chapter • Family life

Breeding

Chapter • Wild behavior

Behavior & Ecology

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Chapter • Scientific place

Taxonomy