''Plateosauravus'' ("

grandfather Grandparents, individually known as grandmother and grandfather, are the parents of a person's father or mother – paternal or maternal. Every sexually-reproducing living organism who is not a genetic chimera has a maximum of four genetic ...

of ''

Plateosaurus ''Plateosaurus'' (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Eur ...

''") is a basal

plateosauria Plateosauria is a clade of sauropodomorph dinosaurs which lived during the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous. The name Plateosauria was first coined by Gustav Tornier in 1913. The name afterwards fell out of use until the 1980s. Classificat ...

n of uncertain affinities 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. ...

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 ...

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

. Sidney Haughton named ''

cullingworthi'' in 1924 from a partial skeleton,Haughton, S.H. (1924) "The fauna and stratigraphy of the Stormberg Series". ''Annals of the South African Museum'' 12:323-497.

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes th ...

SAM 3341, 3345, 3347, 3350–51, 3603, 3607. The specific name honoured collector T.L. Cullingworth. Friedrich von Huene reassessed it in 1932 as belonging to a new genus, which he named ''Plateosauravus''.von Huene, F. (1932).
Die fossile Reptil-Ordnung Saurischia, ihre Entwicklung und Geschichte
. ''Monographien zur Geologie und Palaeontologie'', series 1:4, 361 pp. Jacques van Heerden reassigned it to ''

Euskelosaurus ''Euskelosaurus'' ("good leg lizard") is a sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Late Triassic of South Africa and Lesotho. Fossils have only been recovered from the lower Elliot Formation in South Africa and Lesotho, and in one locality in Zimbabwe. ...

'' in 1979, and this has been how it was usually considered.van Heerden, J. (1979). The morphology and taxonomy of ''

'' (Reptilia: Saurischia; Late Triassic) from South Africa. ''Navorsinge van die Nasionale Museum'' 4(2):23-84. However, recent study indicates that ''Euskelosaurus'' is based on undiagnostic material and thus a '' nomen dubium''; in his series of sauropodomorph and basal sauropod papers, Adam Yates has recommended no longer using ''Euskelosaurus'' and has suggested the use of ''Plateosauravus'' instead.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. ''Th ...

'' (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. More than a dozen additional partial skeletons have been found in the Kruger National Park after a discovery by game warden Adriaan Louw on 27 March 1995. These include juvenile individuals.Durand, J.F. 2001. The oldest juvenile dinosaurs from Africa. African Earth Sciences 33:597–603.

References

External links

Adam Yates on basal sauropodomorphs
Plateosauria Late Triassic dinosaurs of Africa Triassic South Africa Fossils of South Africa Fossil taxa described in 1932 Taxa named by Friedrich von Huene {{Sauropodomorph-stub