| Prosauropods Temporal range: Late Triassic–Middle Jurassic,
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| Mounted skeleton of Plateosaurus engelhardti at the museum of the Institute for Geosciences (GPIT) of the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Germany | |
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| Infraorder: | Prosauropoda Huene, 1920
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Prosauropoda is a likely invalid group of herbivorous sauropodomorph dinosaurs that historically included various basal sauropodomorph taxa from across the world. Prosauropods flourished during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, becoming the dominant herbivores worldwide. Support for the group was found in phylogenetic analyses from the 1990s and 2000s.[1] However, more recent studies have failed to recover the group as monophyletic. Today the group is generally considered to instead form a paraphyletic evolutionary grade of sauropodomorphs that excludes sauropods, and the term 'prosauropod' has largely been abandoned. <refneeded>
They were originally thought to be the ancestors of the sauropods, but are now considered a parallel lineage.
Changing definitions edit
The term "Prosauropoda" was coined by German paleontologist Friedrich von Huene in 1920. Huene defined prosauropods as the early, bipedal, Triassic ancestors of the later giant sauropod dinosaurs.
The development of cladistics must have had something to do with people dropping the term prosauropod, since they were identified as ancestral to sauropods pretty early on.
In the 1990s and 2000s, some cladistic analysis suggested that rather than being ancestral to sauropods, prosauropods were their sister clade. A XXXX study of the genus Massospondylus suggested that Prosauropoda was indeed monophyletic. (Ref please)
The problem however lies in what genera are considered prosauropods. Upchurch (1997) proposes a Node-Based Definition: Blikanasauridae, Thecodontosauridae, Anchisauridae, Plateosauridae, Melanorosauridae, and all sauropodomorphs closer to them than sauropods. More recently, on the basis of studies of early sauropodomorphs Adam Yates proposed a cladogram in which the primitive genera Saturnalia, Thecodontosaurus, and Efraasia (basically, a paraphyletic Thecodontosauridae) represent basal outgroups prior to the prosauropod-sauropod split. Anchisaurus (despite its classic "prosauropod" build) has been removed from Prosauropoda; it was suggested as the most primitive sauropod (Yates 2004), although this was challenged (Fedak and Galton 2007); it is still found to be outside of Prosauropoda, but not within Sauropoda either.[2] The melanorosaurs and blikanasaurs are very early members of the sauropod line.
Technical diagnosis edit
The Prosauropod skull was approximately half the length of the femur; their jaw articulation was slightly below the level of the maxillary tooth row. Their teeth were small, homodont or weakly homodont, spatulate, with coarse marginal serrations; manual digit I bore a twisted first phalanx and an enormous, trenchant ungual medially directed when hyperextended. Prosauropod digits II and III were of subequal length, with small, slightly recurved ungual phalanges; digits IV and V were reduced, and lacked ungual phalanges. Typical Prosauropod phalangeal formula was 2–3–4–3. (Needs a ref)
The blade-like distal parts of the pubis formed a broad, flat apron. The fifth pedal digit was vestigial; the femur had a longitudinal crest proximal to the lateral condyle. The lesser trochanter was a weak ripple proximodistally lying on the latero-anterior surface, and the main parts of the trochanter were below the level of the femoral head (Gauffre, 1993).
History and general description edit
Sauropodomorphs first appeared on the supercontinent of Pangaea as relatively small dinosaurs, from 1.5 to 3 metres (4.9 to 9.8 ft) long, during the middle or late Carnian age, at the beginning of the Late Triassic. They are known from Brazil (Saturnalia and Unaysaurus), Madagascar (recently discovered), and Morocco (Azendohsaurus).
Prosauropods were frequently the predominant herbivore in their environment, and quickly reached large sizes, from 6 to 10 metres (20 to 33 ft). All prosauropods had a long neck and small head, forelimbs shorter than the hindlimbs, and a very large thumb claw (inherited from the thecodontosaurs) for defense. Most were bipedal, although at least one large form (Riojasaurus) was quadrupedal.
Prosauropods retained the same body plan, but by the later Early or Early Middle Norian age had doubled in linear dimensions, as indicated by the 4 to 6 metres (13 to 20 ft) long Plateosaurus gracilis of the lower and middle Stubensandstein of Germany. This animal in turn gave rise to other species of Plateosaurus, and this animal — 8 metres (26 ft) and around 1,500 kilograms (1.7 short tons) or more in weight — dominated the late Norian environment, persisting into the Rhaetian age. Meanwhile in Argentina an even larger prosauropod, Riojasaurus, served a similar role. This animal was 10 metres (33 ft) in length. Curiously, in southern Africa at this time the megaherbivore niche was taken not by prosauropods but by basal sauropods, as indicated by Euskelosaurus, Melanorosaurus and Blikanasaurus, and Antetonitrus. Interestingly, while sauropodomorphs dominated the Norian and Rhaetian large herbivore niche, the large carnivore niche continued to be ruled by the Pseudosuchia (e.g. ornithosuchids and 'rauisuchians').
The end-Triassic extinction killed off the basal sauropodomorphs like Thecodontosaurus, Riojasaurus and species more closely related to sauropods such as Melanorosaurs and Blikanasaurus. However, 'prosauropod' species such as Anchisaurus survived, as did true sauropods. While the first sauropods diversified, the early Jurassic prosauropods radiated out in a number of medium sized, 4 to 6 metres (13 to 20 ft), megaherbivores, such as Massospondylus, Lufengosaurus, and Yunnanosaurus and were as successful as their Late Triassic predecessors.
The prosauropod reign came to an end in the late Early Jurassic. Although three genera of prosauropods survive into the Middle Jurassic (Ammosaurus, Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus), they were no longer the dominant terrestrial megaherbivores; it was sauropods (especially eusauropods) that survived and continued to radiate (Lu et al., 2007; Weishampel et al., 2004).
Classification edit
After Yates (2003) and Galton (2001) [1].[1]
- Suborder Sauropodomorpha
- ?Azendohsaurus
- Aardonyx
- Efraasia
- Panphagia
- Saturnalia
- Thecodontosaurus
- Infraorder PROSAUROPODA
References edit
- ^ a b Yates, A.M.; Kitching, J.W. (2003). "The earliest known sauropod dinosaur and the first steps towards sauropod locomotion". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences. 270 (1525): 1753–1758.
- ^ Yates, Adam M. (in press). "A revision of the problematic sauropodomorph dinosaurs from Manchester, Connecticut and the status of Anchisaurus Marsh". Palaeontology. in press: no. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2010.00952.x.
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- Fedak, T. J. and Galton, P.M. (2007). New information on the braincase and skull of Anchisaurus polyzelus (Lower Jurassic, Connecticut, USA; Saurischia: Sauropodomorpha): Implications for sauropodomorph systematics. Special Papers in Palaeontology (77 ) 245-260.
- Gauffre F.-X. (1993): The Prosauropod Dinosaur Azendohsaurus laaroussii from the Upper Triassic of Morocco. Palaeontology 36(4): 897–908.
- Lu, J., Li, T., Zhong, S., Azuma, Y., Fujita, M., Dong, Z., and Ji, Q. (2007). New yunnanosaurid dinosaur (Dinosauria, Prosauropoda) from the Middle Jurassic Zhanghe Formation of Yuanmou, Yunnan Province of China. Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum 6: 1-15.
- Upchurch, P (1998), The phylogenetic relationships of sauropod dinosaurs. Zool. J. Linnean Soc. 124: 43–103.
- Weishampel, D.B., Dodson, P., Osmólska, H. (eds.) (2004). The Dinosauria, Second Edition. University of California Press., 861 pp.
- Yates, A. M. (2004) Anchisaurus polyzelus (Hitchcock): the smallest known sauropod dinosaur and the evolution of gigantism among sauropodomorph dinosaurs: Postilla, n. 230, 58 pp.
- Yates, A.M. & Kitching, J. W. (2003) The earliest known sauropod dinosaur and the first steps towards sauropod locomotion. Proc. R. Soc. Lond.: B Biol Sci. 2003 Aug 22; 270(1525): 1753–8.
External links edit
- Prosauropoda. Palaeos.
- Sauropodomorph phylogeny. (2003) Mickey Mortimer. Dinosaur Mailing List Archives.
