Plateosauridae is a

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

of plateosaurian

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 ...

s from the Late Triassic of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

. Although several dinosaurs have been classified as plateosaurids over the years, the family Plateosauridae is now restricted to ''Plateosaurus'', '' Yimenosaurus'', ''

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. ...

'', and '' Issi''''.'' In another study, Yates (2003) sunk ''Sellosaurus'' into ''Plateosaurus'' (as ''P. gracilis'').

Classification

Plateosauridae, which was first named by

Othniel Charles Marsh Othniel Charles Marsh (October 29, 1831 – March 18, 1899) was an American professor of Paleontology in Yale College and President of the National Academy of Sciences. He was one of the preeminent scientists in the field of paleontology. Among ...

in 1895, is a

stem-based taxon Phylogenetic nomenclature is a method of nomenclature for taxa in biology that uses phylogenetic definitions for taxon names as explained below. This contrasts with the traditional approach, in which taxon names are defined by a '' type'', which ...

and it was defined by Sereno, 1998 as all animals more closely related to ''

Plateosaurus engelhardti ''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 Euro ...

'' than to '' Massospondylus carinatus''. Galton and Upchurch, 2004 proposed the following definition: all animals more closely related to ''Plateosaurus engelhardti'' than to ''Massospondylus carinatus'' and '' Yunnanosaurus huangi''. Yates, 2007 defined it as all animals more closely related to ''Plateosaurus engelhardti'' than to ''

Diplodocus longus ''Diplodocus'' (, , or ) was a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs, whose fossils were first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a neo-Latin term derived from Greek διπ� ...

''. Recent

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...

analyses suggest that the clade Prosauropoda, which was named by Huene in 1920 and was defined by Sereno, 1998 as all animals more closely related to ''

'' than to ''

Saltasaurus loricatus ''Saltasaurus'' (which means "lizard from Salta") is a genus of saltasaurid dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous period of Argentina. Small among sauropods, though still heavy by the standards of modern creatures, ''Saltasaurus'' was characterized b ...

'', is a

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are al ...

of Plateosauridae as both contain the same taxa. Plateosauridae was recovered as a monophyletic group in the large phylogenetic analysis of early dinosaurs that was presented by Baron, Norman & Barrett (2017) in the journal

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

. In this analysis, the group was found to be sister to

Massopoda Massopoda is a clade of sauropodomorph dinosaurs which lived during the Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous epochs. It was named by paleontologist Adam M. Yates of the University of the Witwatersrand in 2007. Massopoda is a stem-based taxon, define ...

within the clade Plateosauria.Baron, M.G., Norman, D.B., and Barrett, P.M. (2017). A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution. ''Nature'', 543: 501–506. In 2021 a study that named a new species, '' Issi saaneq'', recovered this species as the sister taxon 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 ...

''.

References

External links

Plateosauridae at Palaeos.com
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1195385 Plateosauria Norian first appearances Rhaetian extinctions Taxa named by Othniel Charles Marsh Prehistoric dinosaur families