Bagualia (meaning "wild horse") is an extinct genus of eusauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic (middle Toarcian) Cañadón Asfalto Formation in what is now the Chubut Province of Argentina. The type species, B. alba, was formally described in 2020. Bagualia represents the oldest known definitive eusauropod, and due to the completeness of its material, it represents one of the most important taxa for understanding the early evolution of the group.
Bagualia (meaning "wild horse") is an extinct genus of eusauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic (middle Toarcian) Cañadón Asfalto Formation in what is now the Chubut Province of Argentina. The type species, B. alba, was formally described in 2020. Bagualia represents the oldest known definitive eusauropod, and due to the completeness of its material, it represents one of the most important taxa for understanding the early evolution of the group.
== Discovery and naming == left|thumb|Location map and stratigraphic distribution of the main sauropods of the Cañadón Asfalto Formation The Bagualia fossil material was discovered in Bagual Canyon, approximately from Cerro Cóndor in Chubut, Argentina within the Early Jurassic deposits of the Cañadón Asfalto Formation. The fossils were excavated by the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio during fieldwork in 2007 and 2009. The remains were embedded in a dark grey pelitic matrix rich in organic matter. This layer, dated precisely to around 179 million years ago, formed in a lacustrine environment beneath a basaltic layer. The fossils include the holotype, MPEF-PV 3301 (a partial skull with cervical vertebrae), and additional remains from at least three individuals (MPEF-PV 3305–3348).
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).