Saltasaurus was named by paleontologists J. Bonaparte and J. Powell in 1980. Salta is the name of the Northwestern Argentinian Province where fossils were found. They include: a few oval and circular armored plates, hundreds of bumps which covered its back (roughly 1/4 inch = 6-7 mm in diameter), and several incomplete skeletons, including some vertebrae, limb bones, and jaws.