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echnical officer for a mining company in central and south america he took up the position of elder professor of natural science at the university of adelaide in 1975 where he went on to assist in the founding of the adelaide philosophical society and the royal society of south australia he also had a strong interest in botany as well having published on the flora of the shetlands before leaving england for south australia and travelled extensively throughout australia collecting plants minerals and fossils major acheivements include being the first to recognise ancient glacial pavements at hallett s cove south of adelaide these are now known to be part of a major ice age that struck gondwana during the late carboniferous and early permian while our early tetrapod ancestors lolled about in coal swamps to the north and being the first to recognise and publish on the cambrian sediments on york peninsula still one of the best sources of early cambrian small shelly fossils in the world but it is for his pioneering work on the marine cenozoic faunas of southern australia that i know him best he single handed described 626 marine invertebrate fossil species in a series of more than 15 monographs and papers i was extremely honoured when in 1994 i recieved the tate medal a prize awarded to the best honours research project of the year for a graduating student of the department of geology university of adelaide so who is the second palaeontologist with this birthday oh that s me categories australia mollusca personal the largest prosauropods part 3 march 10 2011 yatesam 6 comments so last time the count down had reached number 6 now lets finish this little series off with the top five largest once again the measurements are femur lengths 5 aardonyx celestae estimated 85 1 cm our newly described taxon was not small we only recovered the femur of the smaller individual but scaling to the larger of the two individuals gives an estimated femur length close to that of the type specimen of euskelosaurus assuming a more nearly circular abdomen than in plateosaurus leads to a mass estimate of somewhere between 1300 kg and 1575 kg with a mass of 1450 kg seeming quite reasonable thats about the mass of an average white rhino not supergiant by dinosaur standards but respectable enough however bone histology showed clearly that it was still an actively growing juvenile despite its size who knows how big an adult aardonyx got a cameraman and photographer record images of fossilized bones of a new dinosaur species aardonyx celestae from the early jurassic period about 200 million years old during an announcement of the discovery at the university of the witwatersrand in johannesburg wednesday nov 11 2009 the fossils displayed on the table were found in the town of senekal near bethlehem in the northern free state in south africa ap photo denis farrell 4 the unnamed postcranium referred to sinosaurus triassicus 88cm the type specimen of sinosaurus is a small fragment of maxilla bearing large blade like teeth that are typical of carnivorous archosaurs given the early jurassic age for the lower lufeng formation this maxillary fragment more than likely came from a large theropod whether or not it is diagnostic i don t know anyway the typically sauropodomorph postcranium attributed to it clearly does not belong to sinosaurus just what it is is uncertain it has been referred to as an unnamed melanorosaurid or another specimen of jingshanosaurus but it may belong to a number of large poorly known basal anchisaurian taxa present in the early jurassic of china yimenosaurus chinshakiangosaurus if it isn t a sauropod or yunnanosaurus robustus whatever it is it is big so now we get to the top three 3 plateosaurus engelhardti 98 cm this is surprising the classic medium sized dull as dishwater prosauropod is actually one of the very largest known members of the group the largest known specimen is the 98 cm long femur from the holotype of pachysaurus wetzelianus which was found in the famous trossingen quarry alongside lots of other plateosaurus specimens its distinctiveness as a different genus and species is not well founded and i m happy to continue treating it as a synonym of plateosaurus engelhardti it is interesting to note that plateosaurus is the most well represented basal sauropodomorph with dozens of referred specimens an average plateosaurus is much smaller than the giant p wetzelianus specimen so is its discovery related to the much larger sample size available for this taxon i would that yes this is almost certainly so because all of the other taxa in this list are based on much smaller sample sizes that in some cases include only juveniles the biological meaning of this list is rather limited 2 camelotia borealis 100 cm since this list is supposed to be arbitrarily restricted to non sauropods there is a good chance that this taxon does not belong in it however there are some features such as the unusually abbreviated mediolateral length of the femoral head that could potentially indicate a closer relationship with melanorosaurus than with sauropoda and the winner is 1 yunnanosaurus youngi estimated 110 cm this is yet another surprising entry although no femur exists we have a pelvis and vertebral column these bones indicate two things 1 y youngi wasn t proportionately different from other smaller basal sauropodomorphs and 2 it was exceptionally large with an estimated femur length of 110 cm in length definately up there in small sauropod territory scaling up from heinrich mallinson s model of plateosaurus gives a rough estimate of about 3 5 tons for this beast that is about the size of shunosaurus or female african elephant certain things about y youngi are rather odd despite its size it seems to be less closely related to sauropods than other basal sauropodomorphs like camelotia and melanorosaurus indeed it may well have had the classic bipedal prosauropod body plan it is also the only non sauropod sauropodomorph that apparently survived into the middle jurassic categories sauropodomorphs fixing massospondylus march 7 2011 yatesam 10 comments if you have an interest in dinosaurs you will have heard of massospondylus it appears in many popular dinosaur books is regarded as one of the commonest dinosaurs in southern africa and has numerous nearly complete skeletons and skulls attributed to it there are even fossil eggs with complete articulated embryonic skeletons inside that are thought to belong to this species but what of the type specimen the official name bearer of the species what is a type specimen when other specimens are referred to massospondylus specifically massospondylus carinatus we are proposing the hypothesis that the referred specimen belongs to the same species whatever that is as the type specimen as so often transpires the name massospondylus carinatus was coined early in the history of dinosaur studies on material that nowadays we probably wouldn t even bother to collect what is the problem with massopsondylus indeed the type specimens of massospondylus carinatus are or more correctly were a paltry pile of damaged vertebrae that were collected off the surface of an outcrop on the farm beauchef abbey near the town of harrismith in what is now the free state province of south africa perhaps the best piece from the type series of massospondylus carinatus a total collection of 56 postcranial bones from this site were donated to the hunterian museum of the royal college of surgeons in london these were described by the famous anatomist and creator of the name dinosaur sir richard owen in 1854 owen selected five vertebrae from this collection as positively belonging to his new species massospondylus carinatus these five vertebrae then became the type specimens when there is more than a single specimen we call them syntypes of the species now this where a major problem arises these vertebrae we now know them to be neck vertebrae although owen mistakenly took them for tail vertebrae are no different from the neck vertebrae of a host of early sauropodomorph dinosaurs such as adeopapposaurus coloradisaurus and lufengosaurus of course tiny differences might be able to be picked out if one looked hard enough but these differences are likely to be subsumed by larger the range of variation seen between individuals of the same species furthermore there is more than one species lurking amongst the massospondylus like sauropodomorphs of the early jurassic of southern africa massospondylus kaalae is one these and there may well be others deciding which of these is represented by the types is impossible so what to do there are three courses of action 1 resurrect one of the old presumed synonyms of massospondylus carinatus as a replacement name there are certainly plenty of these but each and every one of them is based on material that is almost as inadequate as the original syntypes 2 invent a brand new name and apply it to one of the more complete specimens now known 3 designate a neotype that is take the name massospondylus carinatus decouple t from the syntype series and reattach it to one of the more complete specimens the latter of the three options has the great advantage of causing absolutely no taxonomic disruptions that would ensue if a new and unfamiliar name were to be applied to this well known taxon usually option three requires a petition to the iczn which is gazetted in their bulletin subjected to public commentary either for or against and eventually voted on by the iczn before final ratification or dismissal this is a long slow process but nevertheless the route that paul barrett and i favoured so we set about preparing a formal application to the iczn to designate a neotype for massospondylus much to my surprise the application was turned down not because the iczn didn t think we had sufficient grounds to justify the designation of a neotype but because a formal petition wasn t required in this case you see in a twist of fate the original syntypes were destroyed during a german bombing raid over london during world war ii nevertheless they were survived by a series of illustrations and plaster casts some more of the beauchef abbey collection preserved as these plaster casts held in the south african museum capetown i had thought these were sufficient to act as types after all the types of spinosaurus aegytiacus are now reduced to illustrations thanks to an allied bombing raid in the same war however they are not and a neotype can be designated without petition to the iczn this is may be the only case where specimen destruction via bombing has actually helped the science a little bit so finally our designation of a neotype has been published in palaeontologia africana the specimen we selected is a beaut bp 1 4934 or big momma as she is affectionately known so massospondylus has been saved it is no longer in danger of being thrown away as yet another nomen dubium and will forever be one of the best known dinosaurs the skull of big momma now the type specimen of massospondylus carinatus the whole skeleton or at least as much of it as was preserved reference yates a m and barrett p m 2011 for 2010 massospondylus carinatus owen 1854 dinosauria sauropodomorpha proposed conservation of usage by designation of a neotype palaeontologia africana 45 7 10 species concepts in palaeontology are a whole nother can of worms i m not going to say too much about just that i personally prefer concepts based on the biological species concept that is species are populations linked by interbreeding so yes asexual organisms would not consist of species just clades and that to recognise species in extinct populations we would have to use what little proxies for interbreeding as we can find categories sauropodomorphs south africa the largest prosauropods part 2 february 16 2011 yatesam leave a comment ok time to get the countdown started the list is ordered by femoral length or extrapoloated femoral length mostly because good skeletal reconstructions from which volumetric estimations could be made are lacking nevertheless the strong similarity of the body plan of basal sauropodomorphs means that femoral length is a pretty good proxy for body size we ll count down the top ten taxa coming in at number ten we have melanorosaurus readi with a maximum recorded femoral length of 63 cm yes that s right the archetypal big prosauropod is actually quite a tiddler and barely scrapes into my top ten list nevertheless the individual elements of this guy are quite heavy and robust which may have fostered the myth that this near sauropod was generally bigger than plateosaurus and its ilk it probably only tipped the scales at 800 kg melanorosaurus reconstruction by steveoc image from wikimedia commons 9 lufengosaurus magnus 74 cm i put commas around the genus name because no one has proposed any good characters that might link l magnus to l huenei even though they are fairly universally treated as synonyms they could be but i doubt it there are some odd features of l magnus that are not present in l huenei and vice versa a partial skeleton of what might be lufengosaurus magnus left in situ on dawa hill near lufeng yunnan 8 jingshanosaurus xinwaensis 75 cm not the largest basal sauropodomorph by any means but it does include the largest nearly complete mounted skeleton of a basal sauropodomorph 7 plateosauravus cullingworthi estimated 83 cm this is the taxon that has been farly consistently confused with euskelosaurus since the 1970 s it isn t the known femora of plateosauravus are not so big but there are other bones included in the topotype collection that indicate that some members of this species got quite large scaling up from these bones we arrive at an estimated femoral length of 83 cm for the biggest individuals in the topotype bone bed based on other basal sauropodomorphs we can estimate that an individual with an 83 cm femur would have weighed in at 1 1 to 1 2 tons 6 euskelosaurus browni estimated 85 cm regardless of whether or not this is a nomen dubium the individual upon which the name was bestowed did exist and was pretty large further it demonstrably didn t belong to any of its well known contemporaries such as antetonitrus melanorosaurus eucnemesaurus or plateosauravus so provisionally i m treating this as a valid taxon the rather busted up and incomplete type femur of euskelosaurus browni so oddly enough places 10 6 consist entirely of taxa either from the early jurassic of china or the late triassic of south africa another take home point is that a lot of these measurements are based on very limited sample sizes given the rather small differences between many of them it would be silly to treat this list as accurately reflecting the mean sizes of each of these species or the top sizes that they reached nonetheless the very biggest on the list were in a real biological sense large animals than those from the bottom of the list what were the ...