dinosauromorph

dinosauromorph, any of a group of archosaurian reptiles that includes dinosaurs and all other reptiles bearing a closer evolutionary relationship to dinosaurs than to pterosaurs. Dinosaurs include birds and other theropods, sauropodomorphs, and ornithischians—familiar animals that embody the concept of “Dinosauria” erected by British anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen in 1842, long before the present diversity and relationships of dinosaurs were known. In contrast, the clade Dinosauromorpha includes all these dinosaurs plus some other dinosaur-like reptiles that possess some, but not all, of the features of dinosaurs.

In the 1980s it was discovered that dinosaurs and the Pterosauria, a group containing flying reptiles called pterosaurs, shared some important features of the skull, vertebral column, and limbs that indicated a close common ancestry. In short, these two major groups of archosaurs from the Mesozoic Era are often regarded as each other’s closest relatives. It was discovered, however, that some nondinosaurian reptiles were more closely related to dinosaurs than to pterosaurs. Such reptiles are included with the dinosaurs in the Dinosauromorpha. Likewise, those archosaurs that include pterosaurs and other animals closer to them than to dinosaurs are considered to be part of the Pterosauromorpha.

Basal forms

Those dinosauromorphs that are not considered to be true dinosaurs are the most basal members of the group, and they have generally primitive features compared with the dinosaurs. For example, the backbones of the basal dinosauromorphs are more uniform and divided into fewer distinct segments along the vertebral column. Their shoulder girdles tend to be more robust, and their hip girdles are simple and triangular. Their limbs share with dinosaurs and pterosaurs a bowed femur (thighbone), a hingelike knee, a strong straight tibia (shin bone) and a reduced fibula (side bone to the tibia), a hingelike ankle, and a long foot with long toe bones. The head of the femur in basal dinosauromorphs, however, is not as well offset from the shaft as it is in dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Similar to dinosaurs and pterosaurs, the other features of the leg indicate that these forms stood erect and walked with a parasagittal gait (swinging the limbs fore and aft as opposed to rotating them). The basal dinosauropmorphs lived in the Middle and Late Triassic periods (about 246 million to 200 million years ago). They were relatively small (1 metre [3.3 feet] in length), and most were bipedal. One group, the silesaurids, grew to about 2 metres (7 feet) in length and reverted to quadrupedality.

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There are three main groups of nondinosaurian dinosauromorphs. None of these groups, however, are particularly diverse. First are the Lagerpetonidae, named for Lagerpeton, a Middle Triassic, small, rabbitlike, long-legged form known mainly from a hind limb discovered in Argentina in the 1960s. In 2007 a related and much more complete form dated to the Late Triassic of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas was discovered and named Dromomeron. Two species of Dromomeron (D. romeri and D. gregorii) are known but not yet fully described. The second group is represented by Marasuchus (originally named Lagosuchus), another long-legged form from the Middle Triassic of Argentina. It is represented by material that allows a nearly complete skeletonal restoration and shows a lightly built bipedal animal perhaps 40 cm (16 inches) in total length. The third group contains the silesaurids, represented by Silesaurus and Eucoelophysis. Silesaurus is much better known; it was an unusual secondarily quadrupedal plant eater.

Possible replacement by dinosaurs

When the first nondinosaurian dinosauromorphs, such as Marasuchus and Lagerpeton, were found in rocks in Argentina dated to the Middle Triassic, it was thought that they had been quickly replaced when dinosaurs evolved, because fossils of the two groups were never found together in later-formed rocks in which only dinosaurs persisted. Research has shown, however, that in high latitudes dinosaurs and basal dinosauromorphs lived together in faunas for at least 20 million years during the Late Triassic. Thus, at least in some places there was not a rapid ecological replacement by dinosaurs, as had long been thought.