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Garrigatitan, Late CretaceousFrance · named 2021
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Garrigatitan

Type species Garrigatitan meridionalis

Lived
84 to 72 million years ago, Late Cretaceous
Diet
Herbivore
Group
Sauropods
Found in
France
Named by
Díez Díaz et al. 2021

Where its fossils were found

The evidence

Today

1 find

80 million years ago

Map: C. R. Scotese, PALEOMAP

Habitat

Rivers crossed a broad floodplain surrounded by conifers and flowering plants, with alternating dry and wet periods. Neighbors included Atsinganosaurus, Matheronodon and turtles.

Field notes

About Garrigatitan

What it was like

Garrigatitan was a titanosaur, a long-necked plant eater whose closest relatives remain uncertain. Different analyses place it on different branches of the titanosaur family tree. It is known from bones of several animals.

Its world

It lived in the Late Cretaceous, in what is now France. Europe was then a chain of islands.

How it was found

Díez Díaz and colleagues named Garrigatitan in 2021. The type species is Garrigatitan meridionalis. Its name comes from the dry scrubland of southern France.

Field gallery

More views of Garrigatitan

Scenes reconstructed from the available fossil evidence.

Garrigatitan in its habitat, photo 1

1 of 2

The evidence

The science behind Garrigatitan

Which parts of the picture come from its own bones, and which come from its relatives.

From its own fossils

  • The type specimen is a sacrum with part of the left hip bone. A rear neck vertebra, two upper arm bones and other hip bones are assigned to it, and a neck rib, a third upper arm bone, a forearm bone and a thigh bone only tentatively.
  • The upper arm bones assigned to Garrigatitan have an hourglass outline with broad ends and a narrow middle, more robust than in Atsinganosaurus but less than in Opisthocoelicaudia. A rounded hollow in the referred hip bone helps distinguish it from other titanosaurs.
  • Microscopic sections of limb bones assigned to Garrigatitan show that the studied animals had reached skeletal maturity.

Borrowed from relatives

  • The missing head is restored by comparison with Tapuiasaurus, and the rest of the neck by comparison with Futalognkosaurus.
  • The body, legs and tail are compared with Mnyamawamtuka, and the hands with Camarasaurus and Apatosaurus.

Still unknown

  • The shape of its skull and the length of its neck. None of the bones assigned to it come from the skull.
  • Whether the largest titanosaur bones at its fossil site belong to Garrigatitan. The bones were found scattered, and their size differences could mean more than one kind of animal or differences between the sexes.
  • Its closest relatives: it was first placed near Lirainosaurus, but a later analysis put it among the colossosaurians, a different branch of titanosaurs. That result may depend on incomplete material and which scattered bones are assigned to it.

Discovery timeline

  1. 2015Its worldCincotta et al.
  2. 2018Same rocksDíez Díaz et al.
  3. 2021Named itDíez Díaz et al.
  4. 2024Family treeMocho et al.

Key papers

The research behind what we know of Garrigatitan

Close relatives

Other members of Lirainosaurinae

Sources: Wikidata