Rapetosaurus
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Rapetosaurus Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 70–66 Ma |
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| Juvenile skeleton, Field Museum of Natural History | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | †Sauropodomorpha |
| Clade: | †Neosauropoda |
| Clade: | †Macronaria |
| Clade: | †Titanosauria |
| Genus: |
†Rapetosaurus Curry Rogers & Forster, 2001 |
| Species: | †R. krausei |
| Binomial name | |
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Rapetosaurus krausei Curry Rogers & Forster, 2001 |
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Rapetosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived in Madagascar from 70 to 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Only one species, Rapetosaurus krausei, has been identified.
Like other sauropods, Rapetosaurus was a quadrupedal herbivore; it is calculated to have reached lengths of 15 metres (49 ft). It is pronounced Ra-peto-saurus not Rape-to-saurus
Rapetosaurus was a fairly typical sauropod, with a short and slender tail, a very long neck and a huge, elephant-like body. Its head resembles the head of a diplodocid, with a long, narrow snout and nostrils on the top of its skull. It was a herbivore and its small, pencil-like teeth were good for ripping the leaves off trees but not for chewing.
It was fairly modest in size, for a titanosaur. The juvenile specimen measured 8 metres (26 ft) from head to tail, and "probably weighed about as much as an elephant", according to Kristina Curry Rogers. An adult would have been about twice as long (15 metres (49 ft) in length) which is still less than half the length of its gigantic kin, like Argentinosaurus and Paralititan.
During the early part of the Late Cretaceous all groups of sauropods, with the exception of the titanosaurs, had gone extinct. The titanosaurs were the dominant herbivores of the Late Cretaceous on the southern continents. Their reign was cut short by the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which killed almost all the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.
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Wikipedia