Name Means: "Salta Lizard" (after the Argentina locale where fossils were first reported in 1980).
Time: Late Cretaceous (80 million years ago)
Location: Argentina; Uruguay
At about 35 feet long, the tiny-headed, long-necked, armor-backed Saltasaurus was actually a mid-sized sauropod, which include the largest land animals ever. Like those gigantic cousins, the 15,000-pound Saltasaurus was a plant-eater, its tail used for whipping defense. Thousands of fossilized eggs, each only slightly larger than a grapefruit, have been found in a massive sauropod nesting ground in Patagonia, Argentina, at the southern tip of South America. Saltasaurus thrived millions of years after sauropods had become extinct in North America.