Aeolosaurus Powell, 1987

Santucci, Rodrigo M. & De, Antonio C., 2011, A new sauropod (Macronaria, Titanosauria) from the Adamantina Formation, Bauru Group, Upper Cretaceous of Brazil and the phylogenetic relationships of Aeolosaurini, Zootaxa 3085, pp. 1-33 : 5

Aeolosaurus Powell, 1987

Type species. Aeolosaurus rionegrinus Powell, 1987

Geographical and stratigraphical range. Río Negro and Chubut provinces, Argentina, Allen, Angostura Colorada, Bajo Barreal, and Los Alamitos formations; and São Paulo and Minas Gerais states, Brazil, Adamantina and Marília formations.

Emended diagnosis. Titanosaur with the following unique association of characters: prezygapophyses curved downward on anterior caudal vertebrae and haemal arches with double articular facets set in a concave posterodorsal surface on anterior and middle caudal vertebrae.

Comments. In the description of Aeolosaurus rionegrinus, Powell (1986, 1987 , 2003) mentioned several characteristics that, according to him, would be the autapomorphies of that species. With the description of a new Aeolosaurus species from Argentina ( Casal et al., 2007) and the proposal of the clade Aeolosaurini by Franco-Rosas et al. (2004), many of the autapomorphies of A. rionegrinus became the synapomorphies of the genus Aeolosaurus or of the clade Aeolosaurini, which also comprises the Brazilian titanosaur Gondwanatitan. Additionally, many of the appendicular features seen in A. rionegrinus cannot be assessed in these other taxa due to preservation problems. Since only the anterior and middle caudal vertebrae and the haemal arches are preserved in nearly all aeolosaurines known to date, we decided to constrain the diagnosis of the genus to these elements until more complete material are available in order to avoid creating ambiguous characteristics.