Dzharatitanis kingi, a new rebbachisaurid genus from the Bissekty Formation

[austrosaurus]

Alexander Averianov and Hans-Dieter Sues have named a new genus of rebbachisaurid, Dzharatitanis kingi, from the mid-Cretaceous Bissekty Formation of Uzbekistan. Although known from a single caudal vertebra, the holotype is well-preserved and shows distinctive rebbachisaurid autapomorphies. As the youngest-known rebbachisaurid and the first named member of the clade from Asia, the authors consider it likely to have descended from European genera such as Demandasaurus and the so-called Wessex rebbachisaurid, although in my opinion a close relation to African species such as Rebbachisaurus is at least equally possible.
The paper is open-access:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246620

[austrosaurus]

I forgot to add that the authors also included an indeterminate braincase from the same formation in their phylogenetic analyses and found it to clade within Titanosauriformes rather than Rebbachisauridae, confirming the presence of at least two sauropods in the Bissekty Formation.

[Dynomikegojira]

Amazing discovery considering the location and the time

[Halichoeres]

Cool, thanks for sharing. The formation rang a bell, and it turns out I'd seen it before as the one that gave us Azhdarcho and hence the name Azhdarchidae. I'm digging these Uzbek names.