Lirainosaurinae is a subfamily of saltasaurid titanosaursauropods from the Late Cretaceous of France, Spain, and Romania.
Systematics[]
Lirainosaurinae was defined by Díez Díaz et al. (2018) as comprising "Lirainosaurus, Ampelosaurus, their common ancestor, and all of its descendants", and includes the two definitional taxa as well as Atsinganosaurus, Lohuecotitan, and Paludititan. The five genera are known from Europe and all within the timespan of the late Campanian (Lirainosaurus) to early Maastrichtian (Ampelosaurus and Atsinganosaurus). Lirainosaurinae was recovered by Diez et al. (2018) as phylogenetically intermediate between the clades traditionally considered Saltasauridae and a clade containing taxa normally found in Aeolosaurini and Lognkosauria.[1] Unpublished cladistic results by Mocho et al. (2019) recover Lohuecotitan and Paludititan as members of Lirainosaurinae, and place Lirainosaurinae as an early-diverging branch of Saltasauridae.[2]
^ abcDíez Díaz, V.; Garcia, G.; Pereda-Suberbiola, X.; Jentgen-Ceschino, B.; Stein, K.; Godefroit, P.; Valentin, X. (2018). "The titanosaurian dinosaur Atsinganosaurus velauciensis (Sauropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of southern France: New material, phylogenetic affinities, and palaeobiogeographical implications". Cretaceous Research. 91: 429–456. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2018.06.015.
^Mocho P, Páramo A, Escaso F, Marcos-Fernández F, Vidal D, Ortega F. 2019. Titanosaurs from Lo Hueco (Campanian-Maastrichtian) reveal new information about the evolutionary history of European titanosaurs, pp. 111. In: The Palaeontological Association (ed.), 63rd Annual Meeting, 15th–21st December 2019, University of Valencia, Spain, Programme Abstracts, AGM papers
