page_title: Sarmientosaurus
section_title: Skeleton
hierarchical_section_title: Sarmientosaurus / Description / Skeleton
caption_attribution_description: Cranium of Sarmientosaurus musacchioi gen. et sp. nov. (MDT-PV 2). Photographs (A, C, E) and interpretive drawings (B, D, F) in rostral (A, B), caudal (C, D), and caudodorsal (E, F) views. Abbreviations see text. Scale bars = 10 cm.
context_page_description: Sarmientosaurus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur belonging to the Titanosauria. It lived in what is now South America, specifically Argentina, during the Upper Cretaceous Period about 95 million years ago. The type species is Sarmientosaurus musacchioi.
context_section_description: The skull has a length of forty-three centimetres. In top view the skull is more or less tongue-shaped. The antorbital fenestra is small but the eye socket is exceptionally large. In side view the snout is flat with a concave upper profile and surface. The maxilla touches the prefrontal. The jugal bone has an unusual L-shape with a very long front branch and an almost absent rear branch. The fifth cranial nerve, the nervus trigeminus, has extra exits for the branches towards the maxilla and the lower jaw, whereas other sauropods possess but single exit. The front of the lower jaw has an almost constant height.
  The praemaxilla bears four teeth, the maxilla eleven (right side) or twelve (left), and the dentary thirteen. The premaxillary teeth are positioned vertically, the maxillary teeth incline to the front while the teeth of the lower jaw incline to behind, a unique configuration. The build of the teeth is in-between the more spatulate form of basal sauropods and the pencil shape of derived species. The teeth are moderately elongated. They each have sharply-angled wear facets in a high and a low position which, together with their strange orientation, indicates some special, as yet not fully understood, way of cropping vegetation.
  The neck vertebrae are long and elongated. Their internal structure is camellated, i.e. with many small air spaces inside. The middle neck vertebrae have oval, narrow and deep pleurocoels in their sides, pneumatic excavations that nearly touch each other on the midline, separated by a narrow bone plate. The rear joint processes are uncommonly long, reaching beyond the edge of the vertebral body. The front joint processes are supported from below by struts with an oval cross-section, apparently formed by a perforation of the normally plate-shaped ridges in this position. The neck ribs are delicate, thin and rod-shaped.
caption: Skull in front and hind views
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