Gravisauria
| Gravisaurians Temporal range: Early Jurassic—Late Cretaceous, 196.5–66 Ma |
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| Model of Vulcanodon, Poznan Plaza, Poland | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | †Sauropodomorpha |
| Clade: | †Sauropoda |
| Clade: |
†Gravisauria Allain & Aquesbi, 2008 |
| Subgroups | |
Gravisauria is a clade of sauropod dinosaurs consisting of Vulcanodon and Eusauropoda.
The clade Gravisauria was appointed by the French paleontologist Ronan Allain and Moroccan paleontologist Najat Aquesbi in 2008 when a cladistic analysis of the dinosaur found by Allain, Tazoudasaurus, as the outcome was that the family Vulcanodontidae. The group includes Tazoudasaurus and Vulcanodon, and the sister taxon Eusauropoda, but also certain species such as Antetonitrus, Gongxianosaurus and Isanosaurus that do not belong in Vulcanodontidae but to an even more basic position occupied in Sauropoda. It made sense to have Sauropoda compared to this, more derived group that included Vulcanodontidae and Eusauropoda in a definition: Gravisauria (heavy lizards), defined as the group formed by the last common ancestor of Tazoudasaurus and Saltasaurus (Bonaparte and Powell, 1980) and all its descendants.
Below is a cladogram found by Nair and Salisbury in 2012 showing the relationships of Gravisauria:
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