Vallesaurus is an extinct genus of Late Triassic elyurosaur drepanosauromorph. First found in Northern Italy in 1975, it is one of the most primitive drepanosaurs. V. cenenis is the type species, which was first mentioned in 1991 but only formally described in 2006. A second species, V. zorzinensis, was named in 2010.
Vallesaurus is an extinct genus of Late Triassic elyurosaur drepanosauromorph. First found in Northern Italy in 1975, it is one of the most primitive drepanosaurs. V. cenenis is the type species, which was first mentioned in 1991 but only formally described in 2006. A second species, V. zorzinensis, was named in 2010.
==Discovery== The first specimen of Vallesaurus cenensis, MCSNB 4751, was found in 1975 by the staff of the Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali of Bergamo, Italy. The genus was named in respect of professor Valle, the former director of the museum. The species, on the other hand, was named after a local municipality called Cene, which was neighboring the site where the fossil was excavated. The specimen was given to palaeontologist Rupert Wild to study at the Staatliches Museum of Stuttgart, Germany. Wild briefly mentioned "Vallesaurus cenensis" in 1991, but without describing it formally or identifying the holotype specimen. Pinna (1993) listed the name when surveying Triassic reptiles in Italy, and identified MCSNB 4751 as its holotype. Renesto and Binelli formally described Vallesaurus cenensis in 2006, and attributed the name to Wild. However, Renesto et al. (2010) later attributed the name to Renesto & Binelli (2006), arguing that Vallesaurus cenensis was a nomen nudum prior to that study. A second species, V. zorzinensis, was found in the same location and identified from the specimen MCSNB 4783. Its specific name referred to the Zorzino Limestone Formation, where the holotype was found.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).