The first definition for the Saltasaurinae was given by Salgado et al. (1997). It was a node-based definition within Titanosauridae. Titanosauridae is widely regarded as problematic because of the invalid status of the eponymous genus Titanosaurus (Wilson and Upchurch 2003). Independently, Sereno (1998) defined Saltasauridae and Saltasaurinae as node and stem-based taxa, respectively. A node-stem triplet was erected utilizing the best known advanced titanosaurian species (Saltasaurus loricatus, Opisthocoelicaudia skarzynskii), with Saltasauridae as a node-based taxon. This has been followed recently by Wilson and Upchurch (2003) and Salgado (2003). The active definition is a textual variant of that in Wilson and Upchurch (2003), who used species as specifiers.