Argentinosaurus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A genus of enormous plant-eating sauropod dinosaur that lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous period
2. The name of a gigantic long-necked herbivorous dinosaur fossil found in Argentina, among the largest land animals known
3. A colossal four-legged dinosaur from the Cretaceous of South America, known from fragmentary remains of a huge plant eater

Etymology: Argentinosaurus is named after Argentina, the country where its fossils were found, combined with the Greek "sauros," meaning "lizard." The name was given in 1993 by José Bonaparte and Rodolfo Coria, Argentine palaeontologists, who described the animal from bones unearthed in Patagonia's Neuquén Province. Bonaparte had already spent decades pulling sauropods out of Argentine rock, and this find was so large that it became one of the largest land animals known. Its name follows a pattern common in dinosaur naming: a place of discovery paired with a Greek descriptor, as in "Tyrannosaurus," "tyrant lizard." Here the emphasis falls on geography rather than behaviour or appearance, which tells you the discoverers wanted the country's role in the find to be recorded in the name itself.