''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 lo ...

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

from the

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

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

and

Lesotho Lesotho, formally the Kingdom of Lesotho and formerly known as Basutoland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Entirely surrounded by South Africa, it is the largest of only three sovereign enclave and exclave, enclaves in the world, t ...

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 preserve ...

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, so ...

and

, and in one locality in

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

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 preserve ...

material consisting of limb bones and

vertebra Each vertebra (: vertebrae) is an irregular bone with a complex structure composed of bone and some hyaline cartilage, that make up the vertebral column or spine, of vertebrates. The proportions of the vertebrae differ according to their spina ...

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 who specialized in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The stor ...

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

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

specimen ''Euskelosaurus browni'' 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 and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors Orange (colour), orange and black. In the ...

Harry Seeley Harry Govier Seeley (18 February 1839 – 8 January 1909) was a British paleontologist. Early life Seeley was born in London on 18 February 1839, the second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, a goldsmith, and his second wife Mary Govier. When his fa ...

later described ''Euskelosaurus'' in 1894, as did

Friedrich von Huene Baron Friedrich Richard von Hoyningen-Huene (22 March 1875 – 4 April 1969) was a German nobleman paleontologist who described a large number of dinosaurs, more than anyone else in 20th-century Europe. He studied a range of Permo-Carbonife ...

in 1902. Since then, other researchers, including

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

, have mentioned ''Euskelosaurus'' in their papers, although later papers refer to the material under the name ''

Plateosauravus ''Plateosauravus'' ("grandfather of ''Plateosaurus''") is a basal plateosaurian of uncertain affinities from the Late Triassic Elliot Formation of South Africa. Sidney Haughton named ''Plateosaurus cullingworthi'' in 1924 from a partial skelet ...

''.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 (Carnian? age). Its remains are known mostly from Triassic "fissure fillings" in South England. ''T ...

'' (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 ''Eucnemesaurus'' (; meaning "good tibia lizard", for its robust tibiae) is a basal sauropodomorph dinosaur genus usually considered to be a synonym of ''Euskelosaurus''. Recent study by Yates (2006), however, indicates that it is valid and the ...

'' Galton. ''Historical Biology'', iFirst article, 1-30.

Description

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

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

. 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 until the discovery of ''

Lishulong ''Lishulong'' (Traditional Chinese: 栗樹龍 Simplified Chinese : 栗树龙 Pinyin : Lìshùlóng meaning "chestnut tree dragon") is a genus of sauropodiform dinosaur from the Early Jurassic (Sinemurian–Toarcian) Lufeng Formation of China. The ...

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

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

relationships, warranting further study.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2154326 Sauropodomorpha Dinosaur genera Norian dinosaurs Rhaetian dinosaurs Elliot Formation Dinosaurs of South Africa Fossil taxa described in 1866 Taxa named by Thomas Henry Huxley