Open Paleo

Ligabueino

Bonaparte, 1996 LEE-gah-BOO-ay-EE-noh

Named for Italian doctor and fossil enthusiast Giancarlo Ligabue, its discoverer, with the diminutive '-ino' suffix in Italian meaning 'little one', hence 'Ligabue's little one'.

125.8–121.4 million years ago Barremian, Early Cretaceous
Early Cretaceous stages

Ligabueino is a genus of abelisauroid theropod dinosaur named after its discoverer, Italian doctor Giancarlo Ligabue. It is known only from an extremely fragmentary specimen, measuring 79 cm (2.6 ft) long, found in the La Amarga Formation. In spite of initial reports that it was an adult, the unfused vertebrae indicate that the specimen was a juvenile. It was a theropod and lived during the Early Cretaceous Period (Barremian to early Aptian), in what is now Patagonia. Contrary to initial classifications that placed it as a member of the Noasauridae, Carrano and colleagues found in 2011 that it could only be placed with any confidence in the group Abelisauroidea. In 2024, Ligabueino was recovered as a sister taxon of Berthasauridae and Abelisauroidea.

Under dispute

Ligabueino, a tiny and fragmentary taxon, was originally regarded as a noasaurid, but Carrano and colleagues (2011), following Carrano and Sampson (2008), could place it only within Abelisauroidea, and Hendrickx and colleagues (2024) recovered it near the base of that clade.

Species

Ligabueino andesi Bonaparte, 1996

Type species

Named for the Andes mountains of South America, where the holotype was found in Patagonia, Argentina, in the genitive form 'andesi' meaning 'of the Andes'.

Holotype
MACN-N 42 , Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’
Horizon
Puesto Antigual Member, La Amarga Formation, Barremian, Early Cretaceous , 125.8–121.4 million years ago
Locality
La Amarga, Neuquén, Argentina

References

  1. Bonaparte, J. F. (1996). Cretaceous tetrapods of Argentina. Münchner Geowissenschaften Abhandlungen 30: 73-130. bonaparte1996a
  2. Hendrickx, C.; Cerroni, M. A.; Agnolín, F. L.; Catalano, S.; Ribeiro, C. F.; Delcourt, R. (2024). Osteology, relationship, and feeding ecology of the theropod dinosaur Noasaurus leali, from the Late Cretaceous of North-Western Argentina. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 202(4): zlae150. doi:10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae150

    Recovered Ligabueino as sister to the Berthasauridae + Abelisauroidea clade (pruned topology).

    hendrickx2024a
  3. Leanza, H. A.; Apesteguía, S.; Novas, F. E.; de la Fuente, M. S. (2004). Cretaceous terrestrial beds from the Neuquén Basin (Argentina) and their tetrapod assemblages. Cretaceous Research 25(1): 61-87. Elsevier BV.

    Places the holotype in the Puesto Antigual Member.

    leanza2004a
  4. Leanza, H. A.; Hugo, C. A. (1995). Revisión estratigráfica del Cretácico inferior continental en el ámbito sudoriental de la Cuenca Neuquina [Stratigraphic revision of the continental Lower Cretaceous in the southeastern Neuquén Basin]. Revista de la Asociación Geológica Argentina 50(1-4): 30-32.

    Names the Puesto Antigual Member and places it in the Barremian on its stratigraphic chart.

    leanza1995a
  5. Carrano, M. T.; Loewen, M. A.; Sertich, J. J. W. (2011). New materials of Masiakasaurus knopfleri Sampson, Carrano, and Forster, 2001, and implications for the morphology of the Noasauridae (Theropoda: Ceratosauria). Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology (95): 1-53. carrano2011a
  6. Carrano, M. T.; Sampson, S. D. (2008). The Phylogeny of Ceratosauria (Dinosauria: Theropoda). Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 6(2): 183-236. doi:10.1017/S1477201907002246 carrano2008a