Pronunciation: eh-FRAH-see-ah
Meaning: Fraas's one
Author/s: Galton (1973)
Synonyms: See below
First Discovery: Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Discovery Chart Position: #230
Efraasia minor
(Fraas's smaller one)Etymology
Efraasia was named in 1973 for Eberhard Fraas, who was gifted what would become the original type specimens by Albert Burrer.
The species epithet, minor, means smaller" in Latin". The first Efraasia specimen was described in 1908 by Friedrich von Huene who had assigned it to Teratosaurus as a second species—Teratosaurus minor—and based the epithet on the fact that it was smaller than the Teratosaurus name-bearer—Teratosaurus suevicus.
A long and complicated naming-re-naming extravaganza followed, with specimens from the same quarry being named Sellosaurus fraasi (SMNSÂ 12188-12192) by von Huene in the same paper that he had coined Teratosaurus minor, and Thecodontosaurus diagnosticus (SMNS 12667 and SMNS 12684) by Fraas in 1912.
In 1932, von Huene provisionally renamed the latter Paleosaurus (?) diagnosticus by referring it as a seperate species to Riley and Stutchbury's 1840-named Bristol archosaur Paleosaurus which, as it turns out, had been preoccupied since 1833 by Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire's crocodilian Palaeosaurus. But actually, it hadn't, because the names differ in one letter, which is enough to keep the pair apart, so the replacement name—Palaeosauriscus—chosen by Oskar Kuhn in 1959, was uneccesary.
Anyways, Peter Galton coined Efraasia diagnostica in 1973 for Fraas's Thecodontosaurus diagnosticus fossils, but later synonymised it with Sellosaurus gracilis which was itself assigned to Plateosaurus by Adam Yates in 2003. Benton, Juul, Storrs and Galton sank Palaeosauriscus into Paleosaurus in 2000, which is by the by. Yates also realised that "Teratosaurus" minor, "Sellosaurus" fraasi, and "Paleosaurus" diagnosticus were specimens of the same type of critter, and assigned them all to Efraasia with the adopted epithet minor, because "Teratosaurus" minor was named first, but only based on page priority.
Discovery
The first remains of Efraasia were discovered at Burrer Quarry (aka Weißer Steinbruch) in the Löwenstein Formation (previously known as the Middle Stubensandstein Formation) near Pfaffenhofen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, by Hofsteinmetzmeister (Court master stonemason) Albert Burrer in 1902.
Teratosaurus minor (Huene 1908),Sellosaurus fraasi (Huene 1908),
Thecodontosaurus diagnosticus (Fraas 1912),
Palaeosaurus diagnosticus (von Huene 1932),
Palaeosauriscus diagnosticus (Kuhn 1959),
Efraasia diagnostica (Galton 1973).
