Ingentia
From Latin 'ingentia' meaning 'enormous' or 'gigantic', in reference to the animal's large size for its age in the fossil record.
Ingentia is a genus of early sauropodiform dinosaur, sometimes considered a basal sauropod, from the Late Triassic (late Norian-Rhaetian) of Argentina. The type specimen of Ingentia, PVSJ 1086, was discovered in the Quebrada del Barro Formation of northwestern Argentina. It was described in 2018 by Cecilia Apaldetti, Ricardo Nestor Martínez, Ignacio Alejandro Cerda, Diego Pol and Oscar Alcober who named the type and only species Ingentia prima, meaning "first huge one", as the taxon was one of the first very large sauropodomorphs to evolve, along with its close relative Lessemsaurus. A second specimen, PVSJ 1087, was referred, containing five tail vertebrae, both ulnae and radii, a left calf bone and a right foot.
Diagnosis
- Mid-cervical neural arches almost twice as high as respective centra
- Vertebrae C6-C10 with hyposphenes as tall as neural canal height
- Pneumatic structures on posterior cervical neural arches with deep centrodiapophyseal fossae containing internal subfossae in C8-C9 and complex subfossae in prezygapophyseal centrodiapophyseal fossa of C10
- Expanded proximal end of ulna with posteromedial margin 1.5 times larger than radial fossa margin
Species
Ingentia prima Apaldetti et al., 2018
Type species
From Latin 'prima' meaning 'first', together with the genus name forming 'first huge one', as the taxon was one of the first very large sauropodomorphs to evolve.
- Holotype
- PVSJ 1086 , División de Paleontología de Vertebrados del Museo de Ciencias Naturales y Universidad Nacional de San Juan
- Material
- Six articulated posterior cervical vertebrae (C5-C10), right scapula glenoid region, right forelimb lacking all phalanges except phalanx IV.1 and V.1-2
- Horizon
- Quebrada del Barro Formation, Norian–Rhaetian, Late Triassic , 227.3–201.4 million years ago
- Locality
- San Juan, Argentina Apaldetti and colleagues (2018) place the holotype 160 m below the top of the formation, in its southern outcrops, and name no site.
References
- Apaldetti, C.; Martínez, R. N.; Cerda, I. A.; Pol, D.; Alcober, O. (2018). An early trend towards gigantism in Triassic sauropodomorph dinosaurs. Nature Ecology & Evolution 2(8): 1227-1232. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0599-y apaldetti2018a
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Jones, B. (2026). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: Sauropods. Princeton University Press.
Source of the body length and hip height estimates.
jones2026b