Named By: | Jose Fernando Bonaparte in 1996 |
Time Period: | Early Cretaceous, 125 Ma |
Location: | Argentina - La Amarga Formation |
Size: | Estimated about 70 centimetres long for the holotype, though this is believed to be of a juvenile. Adults would have been larger |
Diet: | Carnivore |
Fossil(s): | Fragmentary post cranial remains, neural arches of vertebrae, femur, ilium, pubis, phalanx |
Classification: | | Chordata | Reptilia | Dinosauria | Saurischia | Theropoda | Abelisuroidea | |
Ligabueino (meaning "Ligabue's little one") is a genus of abelisauroid dinosaur named after its discoverer, Italian doctor Giancarlo Ligabue. It is known only from an extremely fragmentary specimen, measuring 79 cm (2.6 ft) long. In spite of initial reports that it was an adult, the unfused vertebrae indicate that the specimen was a juvenile. It was a theropod and lived during the Early Cretaceous Period, in what is now Patagonia. Its remains are too fragmentary to classify. Contrary to initial classifications that placed it as a member of the Noasauridae, Carrano and colleagues found in 2011 that it could only be placed with any confidence in the group Abelisauroidea.