Coloradisaurus brevis was originally named Coloradia brevis by José Bonaparte in 1978,[4] but that genus name was preoccupied by the pine moth Coloradia,[5] so it needed a replacement name. In 1983, David Lambert used the name Coloradisaurus for the genus, but did not indicate it was a replacement or diagnose it.[6] Lambert had gotten the name from Bonaparte in a personal communication and mistakenly thought that Bonaparte had already published it.[3]Peter Galton was the next to use the name Coloradisaurus in 1990, which he credited to Lambert, when he gave the taxon a diagnosis in his review of prosauropods in The Dinosauria.[2][3]Authorship of Coloradisaurus has traditionally been attributed to Lambert, but in 2020, Greenfield et al. judged Lambert's use of the name to be a nomen nudum. They concluded that authorship should be attributed to Galton, who was the first to use the name Coloradisaurus in a way that met the requirements of the ICZN.[3]
Descriptionedit
The holotype of Coloradisaurus (PVL 3967) is a mostly complete skull found associated with an undescribed partial skeleton.[4] While the right side of the skull is well-preserved with almost all bones intact, the left side is distorted and missing more bones.[7] The holotype individual has been estimated to have been 3 m (10 ft) long with a mass of 70 kg (150 lb).[8] A referred specimen (PVL 5904) is a partial skeleton including the most of the dorsal vertebrae and parts of the pectoral and pelvic girdles and limbs.[9] Like Lufengosaurus, it have the angle between the pterygoid and quadratojugal rami nearly 90°. There is also a possibility that the postorbital bones of Coloradisaurus and Sarahsaurus are similar, but due to the deformation of the skull this is difficult to say.[10]
Coloradisaurus was classified as a plateosaurid in the original description by Bonaparte,[4] but this pre-dated the use of phylogenetic analyses in paleontology. He later became opposed to cladistics[11] and continued to consider Coloradisaurus a plateosaurid without testing its phylogenetic position.[12] The analyses of Galton (1990), Galton & Upchurch (2004), and Upchurch et al. (2007) found it to be a plateosaurid, supporting Bonaparte's placement.[2][13][14] However, the analyses of Benton et al. (2000) and Yates (2003) recovered it in a polytomy with other basal sauropodomorphs or as a massospondylid, respectively.[15][16] Subsequent analyses such as Yates et al. (2010), Apaldetti et al. (2013; 2014), Wang et al. (2017), and Müller (2020) have reached the consensus that Coloradisaurus is a massospondylid most closely related to Lufengosaurus and Glacialisaurus.[7][9][17][18][10][19] These three taxa share four synapomorphies found in the metatarsals and femur.[9]
Below is a simplified cladogram after Galton & Upchurch (2004), reflecting its early placement as a plateosaurid.[13]
^ abKent, D.V.; Malnis, P.S.; Colombi, C.E.; Alcober, O.A.; Martínez, R.N. (2014). "Age constraints on the dispersal of dinosaurs in the Late Triassic from magnetochronology of the Los Colorados Formation (Argentina)". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (22): 7958–7963. doi:10.1073/pnas.1402369111. PMC4050597. PMID 24843149.
^ abcGalton, P.M. (1990). "Basal Sauropodomorpha - Prosauropoda". In Weishampel, D.B.; Dodson, P.; Osmólska, H. (eds.). The Dinosauria. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. pp. 320–344. ISBN 0-520-06726-6.
^ abcdeGreenfield, T.; Bivens, G.; Fonseca, A. (2020). "The correct authorship of Coloradisaurus (Dinosauria, Sauropodomorpha): Galton, 1990, not Lambert, 1983". Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature. 77 (1): 153–155. doi:10.21805/bzn.v77.a050. S2CID 229723564.
^ abcdeBonaparte, J.F. (1978). "Coloradia brevis n. g. et n. sp. (Saurischia - Prosauropoda), dinosaurio Plateosauridae de la Formacion Los Colorados, Triasico Superior de La Rioja, Argentina" [Coloradia brevis n. g. et n. sp. (Saurischia - Prosauropoda), a plateosaurid dinosaur from the Upper Triassic Los Colorados Formation of La Rioja, Argentina]. Ameghiniana (in Spanish). 15 (3–4): 327–332. "English translation" (PDF). The Polyglot Paleontologist. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 9, 2021.
^ abBlake, C.A. (1863). "Description of a supposed new genus and species of Saturniidae from the Rocky Mountains". Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Philadelphia. 2 (3): 279.
^ abLambert, D. (1983). A Field Guide to Dinosaurs. New York, NY: Avon Books. p. 102. ISBN 0-380-83519-3.
^ abcApaldetti, C.; Martinez, R.N.; Pol, D.; Souter, T. (2014). "Redescription of the Skull of Coloradisaurus brevis (Dinosauria, Sauropodomorpha) from the Late Triassic Los Colorados Formation of the Ischigualasto-Villa Union Basin, northwestern Argentina". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 34 (5): 1113–1132. doi:10.1080/02724634.2014.859147. hdl:11336/36518. S2CID 86158311.
^Paul, G.S. (2016). The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-0-691-16766-4.
^ abcdApaldetti, C.; Pol, D.; Yates, A.M. (2013). "The postcranial anatomy of Coloradisaurus brevis (Dinosauria: Sauropodomorpha) from the Late Triassic of Argentina and its phylogenetic implications". Palaeontology. 56 (2): 277–301. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2012.01198.x. hdl:11336/3499.
^ abK. E. J. Chapelle, P. M. Barrett, J. Botha, J. N. Choiniere (2019). "Ngwevu intloko: a new early sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic Elliot Formation of South Africa and comments on cranial ontogeny in Massospondylus carinatus". PeerJ. 7 (e7240). doi:10.7717/peerj.7240. hdl:10141/622556.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Lessem, D. (1993). "Jose Bonaparte: Master of the Mesozoic" (PDF). Omni. 15 (7): 52–56. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-05-19.
^Bonaparte, J.F.; Pumares, J.A. (1995). "Notas sobre el primer craneo de Riojasaurus incertus (Dinosauria, Prosauropoda, Melanosauridae) del Triasico Superior de La Rioja, Argentina" [Notes on the first skull of Riojasaurus incertus (Dinosauria, Prosauropoda, Melanorosauridae) from the Late Triassic of La Rioja, Argentina]. Ameghiniana (in Spanish). 32 (4): 341–349. "English translation" (PDF). The Polyglot Paleontologist. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 10, 2021.
^ abGalton, P.M.; Upchurch, P. (2004). "Prosauropoda". In Weishampel, D.B.; Dodson, P.; Osmólska, H. (eds.). The Dinosauria (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. pp. 232–258. ISBN 0-520-24209-2.
^Upchurch, P.; Barrett, P.M.; Galton, P.M. (2007). "A phylogenetic analysis of basal sauropodomorph relationships: implications for the origin of sauropod dinosaurs". Special Papers in Palaeontology. 77: 57–90.
^Benton, M.J.; Juul, L.; Storrs, G.W.; Galton, P.M. (2000). "Anatomy and systematics of the prosauropod dinosaur Thecodontosaurus antiquus from the upper Triassic of southwest England". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 20 (1): 77–108. doi:10.1671/0272-4634(2000)020[0077:AASOTP]2.0.CO;2.
^Yates, A.M. (2003). "A new species of the primitive dinosaur Thecodontosaurus (Saurischia: Sauropodomorpha) and its implications for the systematics of early dinosaurs" (PDF). Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 1 (1): 1–42. doi:10.1017/S1477201903001007. S2CID 55906527. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 20, 2018.
^Yates, A.M.; Bonnan, M.F.; Neveling, J.; Chinsamy, A.; Blackbeard, M.G. (2010). "A new transitional sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of South Africa and the evolution of sauropod feeding and quadrupedalism". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 277 (1682): 787–794. doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.1440. PMC2842739. PMID 19906674.
^Wang, Y-M.; You, H-L.; Wang, T. (2017). "A new basal sauropodiform dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of Yunnan Province, China". Scientific Reports. 7: 41881. doi:10.1038/srep41881. PMC5312170. PMID 28205592.
^ abMüller, R.T. (2020). "Craniomandibular osteology of Macrocollum itaquii (Dinosauria: Sauropodomorpha) from the Late Triassic of southern Brazil". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 18 (10): 805–841. doi:10.1080/14772019.2019.1683902. S2CID 209575985.