Type Species: Aardonyx celestae
Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia – Prosauropoda
Time Period: Early Jurassic
Location: Africa
Diet: Herbivore
The twenty-foot-long Aardonyx is known from the jumbled bones of two individuals, both estimated at less than ten years of age. Aardonyx is beloved among paleontologists because it shows numerous ‘transitional features’ between the prosauropods of the Late Triassic and the sauropods of the Early Jurassic in terms of anatomy and feeding habits. Dr. Matthew Bonnan, who has studied Aardonyx at length, notes, “We already knew that the earliest sauropods and near-sauropods would be bipeds. What Aardonyx shows us, however, is that walking quadrupedally and bearing weight on the inside of the foot is a trend that started very early in these dinosaurs, much earlier than previously hypothesized… On a scientific level, it’s really fulfilling to have a hypothesis on how you think dinosaurs got large, then to test that in the field and get back these kind of data – a new dinosaur – that really does start to fill in some of those anatomical gaps.”
Aardonyx had an elongated neck leading to a small head, a massive torso, and long tail. It was primarily bipedal, though it could drop down on all fours, and the forearm bones were in the process of evolving into the pillar-like legs of the sauropods. The leg bones were beginning to interlock for more strength at the price of flexibility, but flexibility isn’t good when you’re bearing a lot of weight, as the weight could cause the joints to buckle and break. Aardonyx gives us a snapshot of the genesis of the skeletal structures that would enable later sauropods to reach behemoth weights up to eighty tons. Aardonyx lacked the fleshy cheeks of the prosauropods which enabled them to open their mouths wide to pick at choice leaves; Aardonyx would’ve had a ‘bulk-browsing’ method of eating, in which it stripped leaves off the branches wholesale, just as was the case with sauropods.
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