Euskelosaurus

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Extinct genus of dinosaur from late Triassic southern Africa

title: "Euskelosaurus" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["sauropodomorpha", "dinosaur-genera", "norian-dinosaurs", "rhaetian-dinosaurs", "elliot-formation", "dinosaurs-of-south-africa", "fossil-taxa-described-in-1866", "taxa-named-by-thomas-henry-huxley"] description: "Extinct genus of dinosaur from late Triassic southern Africa" topic_path: "geography/south-africa" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euskelosaurus" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Extinct genus of dinosaur from late Triassic southern Africa ::

| fossil_range = Late Triassic, | image = Femur of Euskelosaurus.jpg | image_caption = Femur as depicted in 1894 | genus = Euskelosaurus | parent_authority = | species = browni | authority = Huxley, 1866

Euskelosaurus ("good leg lizard") is a sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Late Triassic of South Africa and Lesotho. Fossils have only been recovered from the lower Elliot Formation in South Africa and Lesotho, and in one locality in Zimbabwe.

History of discovery

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Euskelosaurus_africanus_ischia.jpg" caption="''E. browni'' ischia"] ::

In 1863, Alfred Brown recovered fossil material consisting of limb bones and vertebrae, 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. Harry Seeley 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.

Description

Euskelosaurus is considered to have been a large, robust member of the sauropodomorph clade. Estimates from the existing fossil material measure this dinosaur at about 12.2 m in length and 7 MT in weight.{{cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=QCC9DwAAQBAJ | title = The Fossil Book: A Record of Prehistoric Life | publisher = Dover Publications | date = January 15, 2020 | access-date = 2022-08-25 | page = 444 | author = Patricia Vickers Rich, Thomas Hewitt Rich, Mildred Adams Fenton, Carroll Lane | isbn = 9780486838557

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 relationships, warranting further study.

References

References

  1. (1993). "The Nonmarine Triassic: Bulletin 3".
  2. (1980). "The first record of the prosauropod dinosaur Euskelosaurus from Zimbabwe". Arnoldia Zimbabwe.
  3. (1866). "On the remains of large dinosaurian reptiles from the Stormberg mountains, South Africa". Geological Magazine.
  4. (1894). "XLI.—On Euskelesaurus Brownii (Huxley)". Annals and Magazine of Natural History.
  5. (1911). "On the dinosaurs of the Stormberg, South Africa". Annals of the South African Museum.
  6. (March 2019). "The morphology and taxonomy of Euskelosaurus (Reptilia: Saurischia: Late Triassic) from South Africa". Nasionale Museum.
  7. (1999). "The basicranium of a basal prosauropod from the Euskelosaurus range zone and thoughts on the origin of dinosaurs". Journal of African Earth Sciences.
  8. (2004). "The death of a dinosaur: dismembering Euskelosaurus".
  9. (1985). "Notes on the Melanorosauridae, a family of large Prosauropod Dinosaurs (Saurischia: Sauropodomorpha)". Geobios.
  10. 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
  11. 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.
  12. Yates, A.M. (2006). Solving a dinosaurian puzzle: the identity of ''[[Aliwalia rex]]'' Galton. ''Historical Biology'', iFirst article, 1-30.
  13. (2001). "The oldest juvenile dinosaurs from Africa". Journal of African Earth Sciences.
  14. McPhee, Blair Wayne. (2016). "The South African Mesozoic: advances in our understanding of the evolution, palaeobiogeography, and palaeoecology of sauropodomorph dinosaurs".
  15. (2016). "A hyper-robust sauropodomorph dinosaur ilium from the Upper Triassic–Lower Jurassic Elliot Formation of South Africa: Implications for the functional diversity of basal Sauropodomorpha". Journal of African Earth Sciences.
  16. Krupandan, Emil Darius. (2019). "Unravelling the biology of the Southern African Sauropodomorph dinosaurs, Plateosauravus and the 'Maphutseng dinosaur'". [[University of Cape Town]].

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sauropodomorphadinosaur-generanorian-dinosaursrhaetian-dinosaurselliot-formationdinosaurs-of-south-africafossil-taxa-described-in-1866taxa-named-by-thomas-henry-huxley