Qunkasaura
 | An editor has performed a search and found that sufficient sources exist to establish the subject's notability. (September 2024) |
| Qunkasaura Temporal range: Late Cretaceous,
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Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | Saurischia |
| Clade: | †Sauropodomorpha |
| Clade: | †Sauropoda |
| Clade: | †Macronaria |
| Clade: | †Titanosauria |
| Family: | †Saltasauridae |
| Genus: | †Qunkasaura Mocho et al., 2024 |
| Species: | †Q. pintiquiniestra
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| Binomial name | |
| †Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra Mocho et al., 2024
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Qunkasaura is a genus of saltasauroid titanosaur dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian–Maastrichtian) Lo Hueco site of the Villalba de la Sierra Formation of Spain. The type species is Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra.[1]
Discovery and naming
[edit]The holotype specimen of Qunkasaura is a partial skeleton belonging to a single individual.
It was described as a new genus and species of titanosaur in 2024. The generic name, Qunkasaura, combines the name of Qunca or Kunka, an Andalusian city that gave rise to the village of Fuentes in Cuenca, Spain, where the Lo Hueco site is located, with the Greek word saura, meaning "lizard"; it also refers to Antonio Saura, a twentieth-century painter from Cuenca. The specific name, pintiquiniestra, refers to Queen Pintiquiniestra, a character from the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.[1]
Classification
[edit]Mocho et al. entered Qunkasaura into a phylogenetic analysis and found it to be a member of the subfamily Opisthocoelicaudiinae within Saltasauridae as the sister taxon to Abditosaurus. The analysis also finds lirainosaurines to be close relatives of saltsaurids, and Mocho et al. Coin the clade Lohuecosauria to contain the two. A cladogram adapted from their analysis is shown below:[1]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Mocho, P.; Escaso, F.; Marcos-Fernández, F.; Páramo, A.; Sanz, J. L.; Vidal, D.; Ortega, F. (2024). "A Spanish saltasauroid titanosaur reveals Europe as a melting pot of endemic and immigrant sauropods in the Late Cretaceous". Communications Biology. 7. 1016. doi:10.1038/s42003-024-06653-0.
