Thecodontosaurus

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Thecodontosaurus

Thecodontosaurus ("socket-tooth lizard") is a genus

Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
of herbivorous

Herbivore

Herbivory is a form of predation in which an organism, known as an herbivore, heterotrophs principally autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria....
dinosaur which lived during the late Triassic period

Triassic

The Triassic is a geologic period that extends from about 251 to 199 annum . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic....
Period (Norian

Norian

The Norian Stage was a portion of the Triassic geological period. It dates from 216.5 ? 2.0 to 203.6 ? 1.5 Mya . It was preceded by the Carnian Stage and succeeded by the Rhaetian Stage....
and/or Rhaetian

Rhaetian

PaleogeographyAt this stage, Pangaea began to break-up, though the Atlantic Ocean was not yet formed....
age). Its remains are known mostly from Triassic "fissure fillings" in South England and Wales. On average, it was 1.20 metre

Metre

The metre or meter is a Unit of measurement of length. It is the SI base unit of length in the metric system and in the International System of Units , used around the world for general and scientific purposes....
s (4 ft) long, 0.3 metres (1 ft) tall, and weighed 11 kilograms (25 lb

Pound (mass)

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Encyclopedia

Thecodontosaurus ("socket-tooth lizard") is a genus

Genus

Herbivore

Triassic

Norian

Rhaetian

Metre

Pound (mass)

The pound or pound-mass is a Units of measurement of massused in the Imperial unit, United States customary units and other systems of measurement....
).

Thecodontosaurus had a rather short neck supporting a fairly large skull with quite big eyes. Its jaws contained many small- to medium-sized, serrated, leaf-shaped teeth. This dinosaur's hands and feet each had five digits, and the hands were long and rather narrow with an extended claw on each. This dinosaur's front limbs were much shorter than the legs, and its tail was much longer than the head, neck and body put together.

Although not actually the earliest member of the group, Thecodontosaurus is the most primitive well-known representative of the sauropodomorph

Sauropodomorpha

The Sauropodomorpha were a group of long-necked, herbivore dinosaurs that eventually dropped down on quadruped and became the largest animals that ever terrestrial animal....
dinosaurs. Originally it was included under the Prosauropoda

Prosauropoda

Prosauropoda or prosauropods were a group of early herbivorous dinosaurs that lived during the Triassic and early Jurassic periods. They were frequently the predominant herbivore in their environment, and quickly reached large size ....
(Upchurch 1998) but more recently it has been suggested that Thecodontosaurus and its relatives were prior to the prosauropod-sauropod split (Yates & Kitching 2003). New reconstructions show that its neck is proportionally shorter than in more advanced early sauropodomorphs.

The original type specimen

Holotype

A holotype is one of several possible biological types. A type is what fixes a name to a taxon. A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described....
of Thecodontosaurus was a victim of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
bombings by the Germans. The remains of this dinosaur and other material related to it were destroyed in 1940. However, more remains have been found at a number of localities, including Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a City status in the United Kingdom, unitary authority area and Ceremonial counties of England in South West England, west of London, and east of Cardiff....
. Some of this new material pertains to a juvenile specimen that may belong to a distinct species, Thecodontosaurus caducus Yates, 2003. The dinosaur Agrosaurus
Agrosaurus

Agrosaurus Members of an expedition from the British ship HMS Fly supposedly collected a tibia, a claw and some other fragments in 1844 from Cape York, Queensland....
macgillivrayi (Seeley, 1891), once thought to be from Australia

Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
, but more likely from England and misidentified, is probably synonymous with Thecodontosaurus antiquus (Vickers-Rich et al., 1999).

In 2007, a paper by Yates, Galton, and Kermack put forth the claim that Thecodontosaurus caducus belongs to a different genus, which they have named Pantydraco
Pantydraco

Pantydraco was a genus of Basal sauropodomorpha dinosaur from the Late Triassic of United Kingdom. It is based on a partial juvenile skeleton once thought to belong to Thecodontosaurus....
.

External links

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at Thescelosaurus! (scroll down)