Gyposaurus
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Gyposaurus Temporal range: Early Jurassic |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Sauropodomorpha |
| Infraorder: | ?Prosauropoda |
| Family: | unknown |
| Genus: |
Gyposaurus Broom, 1911 |
| Species | |
Gyposaurus (meaning "vulture lizard", referring to the outdated hypothesis that prosauropods were carnivores) is a genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur from the early Jurassic of South Africa and China. It is usually considered to represent juveniles of other prosauropods, but "G." sinensis is regarded as a possibly valid species in recent reviews of the prosauropods (Galton and Upchurch, 2004).
G. capensis was named in 1911 by Scottish physician and paleontologist Robert Broom from a partial skeleton consisting of eleven dorsal and six caudal vertebrae, ribs, gastralia, partial right scapula, right pelvic girdle, left ilium, and most of the right leg, discovered in the Upper Elliot Formation of Orange Free State, South Africa. Originally, he thought it pertained to the dubious genus Hortalotarsus.Galton and Cluver synonymized it with Anchisaurus in 1976, but Michael Cooper synonymized it with Massospondylus in 1981, which has been generally accepted.
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