Petrobrasaurus is a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

. It is a titanosaur

Titanosaur

Titanosaurs were a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, which included Saltasaurus and Isisaurus. It includes some of the heaviest creatures ever to walk the earth, such as Argentinosaurus and Paralititan — which some believe have weighed up to 100 tonnes...

 which lived during the upper Cretaceous period (Santonian

Santonian

The Santonian is an age in the geologic timescale or a chronostratigraphic stage. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous epoch or Upper Cretaceous series. It spans the time between 85.8 ± 0.7 mya and 83.5 ± 0.7 mya...

 age) in what is now Rincón de los Sauces

Rincón de Los Sauces

Rincón de los Sauces is a first category municipality and the capital of Pehuenches Department in Neuquén Province, Argentina.-History :The area was first populated by settlers around the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century, until a flood of the Barrancas River caused the destruction...

, Patagonia

Patagonia

Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

. It is known from the holotype

Holotype

A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...

 MAU-Pv-PH-449 — a partial disarticulated skeleton

Skeleton

The skeleton is the body part that forms the supporting structure of an organism. There are two different skeletal types: the exoskeleton, which is the stable outer shell of an organism, and the endoskeleton, which forms the support structure inside the body.In a figurative sense, skeleton can...

 recovered from the Plottier Formation

Plottier Formation

The Plottier Formation is a geologic formation that outcrops in the Argentine Patagonian provinces of Río Negro and Neuquén. It is the younger of two formations belonging to the Río Neuquén Subgroup within the Neuquén Group, with the oldest rocks dating from the late Coniacian and its youngest...

 (Neuquén Basin), Argentina. This genus was named by Leonardo S. Filippi, José Ignacio Canudo, Leonardo J. Salgado, Alberto C. Garrido, Rodolfo A. Garcia, Ignacio A. Cerda and Alejandro Otero in 2011

2011 in paleontology

-Lobopods:-Arachnids:-Insects:-Newly named jawless vertebrates:-Newly named acanthodian:-Newly named cartilaginous fishes:-Newly named bony fishes:-Newly named lepospondyls:-Newly named temnospondyls:-Newly named lissamphibians:...

, and the type species is Petrobrasaurus puestohernandezi. The generic name is derived from "Petrobras

Petrobras

Petróleo Brasileiro or Petrobras is a semi-public Brazilian multinational energy corporation headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the largest company in Latin America by market capitalization and revenue, and the largest company headquartered in the Southern Hemisphere by market...

" (oil company) and saurus, "lizard". The specific name refers to the Puesto Hernández oil field

Oil field

An oil field is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over a large area, possibly several hundred kilometres across, full exploitation entails multiple wells scattered across the area...

, where the fossil remains were found.