COLORADISAURUS

Coloradisaurus—a member of Massospondylidae (a group of Late Triassic long-necked sauropodomorphs or "prosauropods")—is named after the Los Colorados Formation of Argentina and has nothing to do with Colorado. Nor is it anything like Coloradia, which is what Bonaparte initially christened its remains in 1978, blissfully unaware that C.A. Blake had claimed the name for the pesky pine moth Coloradia pandora—a decimator of trees but a delicacy to California's Paiute people, in larvae form—115 years earlier.

David Lambert became the unintentional author of a replacement name after a misunderstanding during a chat with Bonaparte in 1983 and this accidental fix was accepted for many years. However, according to ICZN rules, that name was never official as a diagnosis and the provision of a type species were both lacking, so Peter Galton became an unintentional author himself when he published the full description of a Coloradisaurus brevis in 1990, despite attributing the name to Lambert.

Coloradisaurus fossils are scarce, but those that are known can be compared to its closest relatives to gain a rough idea of general body plan. It was about the same size as Massospondylus and shared many of its characteristics. But its most notable features are a stubby snout and huge eye sockets on the side of a relatively small skull, which led some paleontologists to muse that maybe it was an adult version of Mussaurus, which until recently was only known from juvenile specimens.