Sektensaurus

Sektensaurus (meaning "island lizard", sekten meaning "island" in Tehuelche) is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur, possibly an elasmarian, from the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of Patagonia, Argentina. Its remains were uncovered in the fluvial tuffs of the Lago Colhué Huapí Formation in the Golfo San Jorge Basin. The type and only species is S. sanjuanboscoi. Sektensaurus is the first non-hadrosauroid ornithopod of central Patagonia. The discovery of the genus increases the anatomical knowledge of ornithopods and adds new data on the compositions of dinosaur faunas that lived in Patagonia close to Antarctica at the end of the Cretaceous.

==History of discovery== Fossils from the Late Cretaceous of central Patagonia have been found since the 1910s in the area around Lago Colhué Huapi on and around islands that emerge during periods of low lake level. On one such ephemeral island in 1993 Argentine palaeontologist Marcello Luna discovered and collected a partial associated skeleton of a small non-hadrosaurid ornithopod, the first from the region. In 2010 Luna, as well as Argentine palaeontologists Lucio Ibiricu and colleagues described the 1993 collection, UNPSJB-PV 960, multiple postcranial elements, as a single individual from the Bajo Barreal Formation of Campanian to possibly Maastrichtian age. The assessment as a single individual was supported by the adult nature of all the remains, their association within only a area, and the lack of any other fossils around the site. While Ibiricu and colleagues did not name the specimen, they did find that it was possibly close to but distinct from other ornithopods from Gondwana.