''Euskelosaurus'' ("good leg lizard") is a

sauropodomorph Sauropodomorpha ( ; from Greek, meaning "lizard-footed forms") is an extinct clade of long-necked, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaurs that includes the sauropods and their ancestral relatives. Sauropods generally grew to very large sizes, had lon ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

from the

Late Triassic The Late Triassic is the third and final epoch of the Triassic Period in the geologic time scale, spanning the time between Ma and Ma (million years ago). It is preceded by the Middle Triassic Epoch and followed by the Early Jurassic Epoch ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

and

Lesotho Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked as an enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the highest mountains in Southern Africa. It has an area of over and has a population ...

Fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s have only been recovered from the lower

Elliot Formation The Elliot Formation is a geological formation and forms part of the Stormberg Group, the uppermost geological group that comprises the greater Karoo Supergroup. Outcrops of the Elliot Formation have been found in the northern Eastern Cape, south ...

and

, and in one locality in

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

History of discovery

In 1863, Alfred Brown recovered

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

material consisting of limb bones and

vertebra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates, Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristi ...

e, in the lower

in the southeastern Free State. In 1866,

Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The stori ...

first described ''Euskelosaurus'' from Brown's fossil material, and named the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

specimen ''Euskelosaurus brownii'' after

Brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model ...

. Harry Seeley later described ''Euskelosaurus'' in 1894, as did

Friedrich von Huene Friedrich von Huene, born Friedrich Richard von Hoinigen, (March 22, 1875 – April 4, 1969) was a German paleontologist who renamed more dinosaurs in the early 20th century than anyone else in Europe. He also made key contributions about v ...

in 1902. Since then, other researchers, including

Robert Broom Robert Broom FRS FRSE (30 November 1866 6 April 1951) was a British- South African doctor and palaeontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University of Glasgow. From 1903 to 1910, he ...

, have mentioned ''Euskelosaurus'' in their papers, although later papers refer to the material under the name '' Plateosauravus''.Yates, A.M. (2003). A new species of the primitive dinosaur ''

Thecodontosaurus ''Thecodontosaurus'' ("socket-tooth lizard") is a genus of herbivorous basal sauropodomorph dinosaur that lived during the late Triassic period ( Rhaetian age). Its remains are known mostly from Triassic "fissure fillings" in South England. ' ...

'' (Saurischia: Sauropodomorpha) and its implications for the systematics of early dinosaurs. ''Journal of Systematic Palaeontology'' 1(1):1-42Yates, A.M., and Kitching, J.W. (2003). The earliest known sauropod dinosaur and the first steps towards sauropod locomotion. ''Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B'' 270(1525):1753-1758.Yates, A.M. (2006). Solving a dinosaurian puzzle: the identity of '' Aliwalia rex'' Galton. ''Historical Biology'', iFirst article, 1-30.

Description

''Euskelosaurus'' is considered to have been a large, robust member of the

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English ter ...

. Estimates from the existing

material measure this dinosaur at about in length and in weight. With such parameters it was the largest of the non-sauropod ("prosauropod") sauropodomorphs. Its bones are robust and it had a graviportal limb arrangement, a key character trait of basal sauropodomorphs.

Classification

While paleontologists generally consider ''Euskelosaurus'' a basal

plateosaurid Plateosauridae is a family of plateosaurian sauropodomorphs from the Late Triassic of Europe, Greenland, Africa and Asia. Although several dinosaurs have been classified as plateosaurids over the years, the family Plateosauridae is now restrict ...

sauropodomorph, it has recently been considered a ''nomen dubium'' and a “waste-basket” taxon with poorly understood

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups ...

relationships, warranting further study.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2154326 Plateosauridae Late Triassic dinosaurs of Africa Paleontology in Lesotho Fossils of South Africa Fossils of Zimbabwe Fossil taxa described in 1866 Taxa named by Thomas Henry Huxley