Arkharavia

 Arkharavia (meaning "Arkhara road") is a dubious genus of somphospondylan sauropod, but at least some of the remains probably belong to a hadrosaurid. It lived in what is now Russia, during the Late Cretaceous. It was described in 2010 by Alifanov and Bolotsky. The type species is A. heterocoelica.

Arkharavia Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 66 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Clade:	Saurischia
Clade:	†Sauropodomorpha
Clade:	†Sauropoda
Clade:	†Macronaria
Clade:	†Titanosauriformes
Clade:	†Somphospondyli
Genus:	†Arkharavia Alifanov & Bolotsky, 2010
Type species
Arkharavia heterocoelica Alifanov & Bolotsky, 2010

Description

The holotype material consists of a single anterior caudal vertebra. Also, a tooth and a few proximal tail vertebrae (from near the base of the tail) were originally described as belonging to this species, but these probably belong to an indeterminate hadrosaur.The vertebrae are unusual in being weakly heterocoelous, which means that the centrum or body of a vertebra has saddle-shaped surfaces where it meets the vertebrae in front or behind it.

Classification

Arkharavia was originally classified as a titanosauriform sauropod, thought to be related to Chubutisaurus, a sauropod from the Cretaceous of Argentina. However, further study showed that the referred vertebra in fact belonged to a hadrosaurid.The holotype vertebra is currently considered an indeterminate somphospondylan.

Contemporaries

Arkharavia lived in the Amur Region, which was a 'hot spot' for dinosaurs in Russia. Other dinosaurs from the area include the lambeosaurines (hollow-crested duckbills) Amurosaurus, Olorotitan, and Charonosaurus, and the saurolophine (duckbills without hollow crests) Kerberosaurus and Wulagasaurus.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.