Dino of the Week: Euskelosaurus

Type Species: Euskelosaurus browni

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Sauropodomorpha - Prosauropoda

Time Period: Late Triassic

Location: Africa

Diet: Herbivore

This Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic prosauropod was the first dinosaur to be discovered in Africa, and the number of specimens found in South African sandstones imply it had been a staple of the area’s ecosystem. Euskelosaurus foreshadowed the giant sauropods of the Jurassic, with adults reaching up to forty feet long head-to-tail (that estimate may change depending on the head; though scientists have a good idea of what it looked like, a skull has yet to be found). Its name means “good-limbed lizard,” and it strikes a chord of irony: the shaft of its thigh bone was twisted, which may have rendered it bow-legged! Because dinosaurs positioned their legs underneath their bodies, this anatomical feature is a bit of a mystery. Some have proposed that Euskelosaurus’s earliest versions had an erect posture, but as its body grew larger, vastly exceeding the size of its proto-dinosaurian ancestors, its femur twisted in an evolutionary attempt to handle the added weight. This evolutionary sideshow would’ve been inefficient compared to keeping an erect stance, and perhaps this is seen in the fact that Euskelosaurus doesn’t seem to have made it past the Lower Jurassic.