Tralkasaurus cuyi (name meaning: "Thunder lizard") is a genus of abelisaurid theropod from the Late Cretaceous Huincul Formation in the Río Negro Province of Argentina. Its name comes from the Mapuche word "tralka", meaning "thunder."
Discovery and naming[]
Description[]
Tralkasaurus is a new genus and species of medium-sized abelisaurid theropod dinosaur. Tralkasaurus cuyi has been discovered by Dr. Mauricio Cerroni from the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences and CONICET and his colleagues.
An artist’s impression of Tralkasaurus cuyi. Image artist: Sebastian Rozadilla.
Tralkasaurus cuyi lived approximately 90 million years ago in what is now Patagonia, Argentina. It belongs to Abelisauridae, a group of ceratosaurian theropod dinosaurs that thrived during the Cretaceous period on the supercontinent Gondwana.
The incomplete fossilized skeleton of Tralkasaurus cuyi, including a jaw and vertebra, were discovered at the Violante Farm fossil site in Río Negro province, northern Patagonia. [1]
Classification[]
Tralkasaurus has a confusing combination of features that make it harder than normal to classify. Although the caudal transverse processes possess projections that are similar to those in Brachyrostran Abelisaurids, it also contains large antorbital fossae on the maxilla, which more resembles basal Abelisauroids. As such, Tralkasaurus has been tentatively assigned to Abelisauridae as one of the basal-most members.
Paleoecology[]
Tralkasaurus lived with a variety of other animals. These include the theropods Gualicho, Aoniraptor, and Taurovenator (as well as an unnamed coelurosaur and an unnamed Carcharodontosaurid), a titanosaurian sauropod, an ornithopod, the eilenodontid rhynchocephalian Patagosphenos, a potentially neosuchian crocodyliform, a squamate, a chelid turtle, and the ray-finned fish Lepidotes.
References[]
Reconstruction: https://www.deviantart.com/cisiopurple/art/Tralkasaurus-822334264