EUSKELOSAURUS
a dubious plant-eating plateosaurid sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Late Triassic of South Africa.
Pronunciation: yoo-SKEE-lo-SOR-us
Meaning: Well-limbed lizard
Author/s: Huxley (
1866)
Synonyms: See
below
First Discovery: Aliwal North, South Africa
Discovery Chart Position: #25
Euskelosaurus browni
(Brown's good leg lizard)Etymology
Euskelosaurus is derived from the Greek "eu" (good), "skelos" (hind leg), and "sauros" (lizard).
The
species epithet,
browni, honors Alfred Brown who made the first discovery.
Discovery
Euskelosaurus was discovered in the Lower Elliot Formation at Barnard's Spruit in the Stormberg Mountains by Alfred Brown, about 15 miles south of his home town of Aliwal North, South Africa, in 1863.
The
holotype (BMNH R1625) is a portion of a right femur, "25 and a half inches long".
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Triassic
Stage: Norian
Age range: 228-209 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 8 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: 800 Kg
Diet: Herbivore
Euskelesaurus (Huxley, 1866). Huxley initially described
Euskelosaurus as
Euskelesaurus in 1866, but the name was badly formed, so Friedrich von Huene emended it in 1902.
Orosaurus (Huxley, 1866).
Huxley coined
Orosaurus for what he thought was a femur (R.1626) from Brown's fossil shipments in the same 1866 paper that he described
Euskelesaurus. Lydekker realised this bone was actually a shin, renamed it
Orinosaurus, and added the epithet
capensis in 1889 in a bid to avoid any confusion with the "more correctly formed"
Oreosaurus that Peters had coined in 1862. Under the rules of priority, Peters' critter had already seen off Marsh's 1872
Oreosaurus, an anguid lizard from Wyoming that Cope renamed
Xestops a year later. As it turns out, Lydekker's move was a wasted, and unnecessary, excercise, but
Orinosaurus lay virtually undisturbed for just over a half century until von Huene moved its single bone to
Euskelosaurus (as
Euskelosaurus capensis) in 1940. Almost all experts consider
Euskelosaurus capensis to be a specimen of
Euskelosaurus brownei, perhaps part of the holotype... except for Steel (1970) who still calls it
Orosaurus.
Orinosaurus capensis (Lydekker, 1889). See
Orosaurus.
Euskelosaurus capensis (Huene, 1940). See
Orosaurus.
References
• Huxley TH (1867) "On some Remains of large Dinosaurian Reptiles from the Stormberg Mountains, South Africa" in
The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 23.
• Lydekker R (1889) "Notes on new and other dinosaurian remains".
Geological Magazine, decade 3 6(8):352-356
• Seeley HG (1894) "
XLI.—On Euskelesaurus Brownii (Huxley)".
Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 14(83): 317–340. DOI: 10.1080/00222939408677811
• Huene F von (1906) Über die Dinosaurier der Aussereuropaïschen Trias" [
On the Dinosauria of the extra-European Triassic].
Geologie und Paläontologie Abhandlungen (n. s.) VIII: 97-156 (English translation by M. Benton.)
• Broom R (1913) "
On the dinosaurs of the Stormberg, South Africa".
Ann. S. Afr. Mus. 7: 291-308.
• Huene F von (1940) "Die Saurier der Karroo-, Gondwana-, und verwandten Ablagerungen in faunistischer, biologischer und phylogenetischer Hinsicht" [Saurians of the Karroo, Gondwana, and other deposits in faunistic, biological, and phylogenetic regard].
Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie, Beilage-Band, Abteilung B 83: 246-347.
• Heerden J van (1979) "The morphology and taxonomy of
Euskelosaurus (Reptilia: Saurischia; Late Triassic) from South Africa".
Navorsinge van die Nasionale Museum, 4(2): 21-84.
• Romer AS (1956) "
Osteology of the Reptiles".
University of Chicago Press 1-772.
• Steel R (1970) Part 14. Saurischia. Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie/Encyclopedia of Paleoherpetology.
Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart 1-87.
• Cooper MR (1980) "The first record of the prosauropod dinosaur
Euskelosaurus from Zimbabwe".
Arnoldia Zimbabwe. 9(3): 1–17.
• Yates AM (2003) "A definite prosauropod dinosaur from the Lower Elliot Formation (Norian: Upper Triassic) of South Africa".
Palaeontologia
Africana 39: 63–68.
• Yates AM (2004) "The death of a dinosaur: dismembering
Euskelosaurus".
Geoscience Africa: 715.
• McPhee BW (2016) "
The South African Mesozoic: advances in our understanding of the evolution, palaeobiogeography, and palaeoecology of sauropodomorph dinosaurs".
(PhD Thesis.)
• McPhee BW, Bordy EM, Sciscio L and Choiniere J (2017) "The sauropodomorph biostratigraphy of the Elliot Formation of southern Africa: Tracking the evolution of
Sauropodomorpha across the Triassic–Jurassic boundary".
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 62(3). DOI: 10.4202/app.00377.2017
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