Ligabuesaurus

The prominent Argentine paleontologist José F. Bonaparte led expeditions throughout northwestern Patagonia during the late 1990s and early 2000s. One of these expeditions, in 1997, examined a site called Cerro de los Leones, which is to the West of Picún Leufú. This locality is part of the Cullín Grande Member of the Lohan Cura formation. This expedition led to the excavation of the enigmatic and controversial sauropod genus Agustinia. Additional remains of sauropods were found at a nearby quarry by the geologist Dr. Héctor Leanza and were collected between 1998 and 2000. A third skeleton was recovered from the same locality, but it was not referred to Ligabuesaurus due to a lack of overlapping material. ==Description==

Jose Bonaparte and colleagues described Ligabuesaurus as a large saurpood, although they did not provide any specific estimates of its full size in the description itself. The femur of the holotype is long and the humerus is slightly shorter at . Rubén Molina-Pérez and Asier Larramendi suggested a similar estimate of long, tall at the shoulder, and a smaller mass of only 14.5 tons In their full osteology of Ligabuesaurus in 2022, Flavio Bellardini and colleagues estimated its mass as being between 17 and 29 tons based on the circumference of the femur and humerus. ==Classification==

In their original description of Ligabuesaurus, Bonaparte and colleagues assigned it to the Titanosauria, but did not conduct a thorough examination of its relationships with the other members of Titanosauria. In their osteology of Ligabuesaurus published in 2022, Flavio Bellardini and colleagues recovered the genus once again as a non-titanosaurian somphospondylian. ;Mannion et al., 2013 }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} ;Bellardini et al., 2022 }} }} }} }} }} }} ==Paleoenvironment==

The Lohan Cura Formation, where all remains of Ligabuesaurus were found, is composed mainly of siltstones and sandstones, which means the environment was likely heavily irrigated by rivers. This is further supported by the prevalence of a variety of turtle fossils. Remains from other sauropods are also common including the rebbachisaurids Limaysaurus and Comahuesaurus, and the enigmatic genus Agustinia. Pterosaur teeth belonging to ornithocheiromorphs have also been found here. ==See also==