Lusotitan

In 1947 Manuel de Matos, a member of the Geological Survey of Portugal, discovered large sauropod fossils in the Portuguese Lourinhã Formation that date back to the Tithonian stage of the Late Jurassic period. In 1957 Albert-Félix de Lapparent and Georges Zbyszewski named the remains as a new species of Brachiosaurus: Brachiosaurus atalaiensis. The specific name referred to the site Atalaia. In 2003 Octávio Mateus and Miguel Telles Antunes named it as a separate genus: Lusotitan. The type species is Lusotitan atalaiensis. The generic name is derived from Luso, the Latin name for an inhabitant of Lusitania, and from the Greek word "Titan", a mythological giant. In 2017, Mocho, Royo-Torres and Ortega suggested that Galvesaurus or Galveosaurus from the Late Jurassic of Spain might represent a junior synonym of this taxon. However, a 2019 description of new material of Galvesaurus by Perez-Pueyo et al. identified phylogenetically informative characters to distinguish it from Lusotitan which was recovered as its sister taxon. ==Description==

Lusotitan was a large sauropod, reaching in length and in body mass. It had long forearms with the humerus and femur measuring and in length, respectively. A large sternal plate that possibly refers to this genus, could indicate larger sizes. ==Paleoecology==

The Lourinhã Formation of western Portugal was likely to be formed during the Kimmeridgian or Tithonian ages of the Late Jurassic period. The area is a coastal region with a strong marine influence. Its flora and fauna are similar to the Morrison Formation in the United States, and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. Lusotitan is the largest dinosaur that has been discovered in the area. Lusotitan lived alongside species of the predatory theropods Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Lourinhanosaurus, and Torvosaurus, the ankylosaurian Dracopelta, the sauropods Bothriospondylus, Lourinhasaurus, and Zby, and the stegosaurs Dacentrurus and Miragaia. == References ==