Euskelosaurus ("good leg lizard") is a Sauropodomorpha dinosaur from the Late Triassic of South Africa and Lesotho. have only been recovered from the lower Elliot Formation in South Africa and Lesotho,
History of discovery
In 1863, Alfred Brown recovered
fossil material consisting of limb bones and
, in the lower
Elliot Formation in the southeastern Free State. In 1866, Thomas Henry Huxley first described
Euskelosaurus from Brown's fossil material, and named the
holotype specimen
Euskelosaurus browni after Brown.
later described
Euskelosaurus in 1894,
as did Friedrich von Huene in 1902. Since then, other researchers, including
Robert Broom, 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 (Saurischia: Sauropodomorpha) and its implications for the systematics of early dinosaurs. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 1(1):1-42][Yates, 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
Sauropodomorpha clade. Estimates from the existing
fossil material measure this dinosaur at about in length and in weight.
With such parameters it was one of the largest 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 plateosauridae sauropodomorph, it has recently been considered a nomen dubium and a “waste-basket” taxon with poorly understood Phylogenetics relationships, warranting further study.
