Talenkauen

Talenkauen was a distinctive basal ornithopod discovered in Patagonia, southern Argentina, dating to the Late Cretaceous epoch. Reaching around four metres in length, it was an agile biped with a relatively small head, long neck, and slender limbs adapted for running. The most remarkable feature of Talenkauen is the presence of paper-thin, oval-shaped mineralised plates positioned along the outer surfaces of its rib cage. Similar intercostal plates are known in a few other South American ornithopods, and they may have aided in lung ventilation or provided subtle structural support to the torso. Its teeth were simple and phyllodont-like, adapted for shearing through herbaceous plants, ferns, and shrubbery in humid Patagonian forests. Talenkauen represents a specialised Southern Hemisphere radiation known as Elasmaria, demonstrating that ornithopods followed unique evolutionary paths in isolation on Gondwana.

It preserves thin, oval mineralised plates between its ribs, an unusual feature among ornithopod dinosaurs.

Where and when

Talenkauen lived in the Late Cretaceous, from 72.1 to 66 million years ago (Maastrichtian age). Its remains come from Argentina, in the Pari Aike Formation.

The numbers

Length 4.3 m (estimates run from 4 to 4.5 m). Mass about 260 kg. Hip height about 1.4 m. That is 2.5 human-lengths, or 0.38 of a double-decker bus. These are estimates from partial skeleton; fields marked estimated by the site are length, mass, first ma, last ma, hip height.

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