Hypselosaurus
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Hypselosaurus Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 70 Ma |
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| Holotype material including femur, tibia, fibula and vertebrae | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | †Sauropodomorpha |
| Clade: | †Neosauropoda |
| Clade: | †Macronaria |
| Clade: | †Titanosauria |
| Genus: |
†Hypselosaurus Matheron, 1869 |
| Type species | |
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Hypselosaurus priscus Matheron, 1869 |
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Hypselosaurus (meaning 'highest lizard', from Greek ὑψηλός meaning 'high' or 'lofty' and σαυρος meaning 'lizard') was a titanosaurian sauropod that lived in southern France during the Late Cretaceous, approximately 70 million years ago in the early Maastrichtian. Hypselosaurus was first described in 1846, but was not formally named until 1869, when Phillip Matheron named it under the binomial Hypselosaurus priscus. The holotype specimen includes a partial hindlimb and a pair of caudal vertebrae, and two eggshell fragments were found alongside these bones. Because of the proximity of these eggshells to the fossil remains, many later authors, including Matheron and Paul Gervais, have assigned several eggs from the same region of France all to Hypselosaurus, although the variation and differences between these eggs suggest that they do not all belong to the same taxon. Hypselosaurus has been found in the same formation as the dromaeosaurids Variraptor and Pyroraptor, the ornithopod Rhabdodon, and the ankylosaurian Rhodanosaurus, as well as intermediate bones from other groups.
In 1846, Pierre Philippe Émile Matheron, a French geologist and paleontologist, described several large bones from Provence, France. In the spring of 1869, Matheron formally described these remains, including a partial femur, fibula and possible tibia and a pair of associated caudal vertebrae, as the holotype specimen of a new taxon, Hypselosaurus priscus. Among the bones, portions of the femur shaft are not preserved, along with a majority of the tibia, while both the fibula and vertebrae are entirely preserved. The layer the fossils came from is likely from the late Late Cretaceous, specifically 70 million years ago.
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