Andesaurus is a sauropod sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Argentina. It was named in 1991 by Jorge Orlando Calvo and José Fernando Bonaparte. It was one of the many sauropods that walked the Southern Hemisphere during the Late Cretaceous, as well as one of the largest from the geological formation it was found in.
Physiology[]
Andesaurus was a large sauropod with a bulky, downwards-sloping body, a deep torso, 4 large, erect, pillar-like legs, a moderately long tail, a long neck, and a small head. Its body would have been covered in scaly skin.
Diet[]
Andesaurus was an herbivore, feeding on leaves from large trees. Its peg-like teeth were used to strip branches of their leaves, and its long neck and limbs allowed it to access vegetation some 7 meters in the air without rearing.
Ecology[]
So far, all we know about Andesaurus is that its long, upwards-pointing neck allowed it to feed off trees without having to rear up, and could also be used to feed off plants closer to the ground. As well as this, it would have traveled in small herds in order to protect juveniles from harm; juveniles and subadults may have fallen prey to many kinds of predators, while adults were impervious to predation from all but fully-grown Giganotosaurus.