Journal
PEERJ
Volume 2, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PEERJ INC
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.458
Keywords
Late Triassic; Norian; Switzerland; Basal Sauropodomorpha; Plateosaurus engelhardti; Juvenile; Neurocentral suture closure; Bone histology
Categories
Funding
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [SA469/24-1]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The dinosaur Plateosaurus engelhardti is the most abundant dinosaur in the Late Triassic of Europe and the best known basal sauropodomorph. Plateosaurus engelhardti was one of the first sauropodomorph dinosaurs to display a large body size. Remains can be found in the Norian stage of the Late Triassic in over 40 localities in Central Europe (France, Germany, and Switzerland) and in Greenland. Since the first discovery of P. engelhardti no juvenile specimens of this species had been described in detail. Here we describe the first remains of juvenile individuals, isolated cervical and dorsal neural arches from Switzerland. These were separated postmortem from their respective centra because of unfused neurocentral sutures. However the specimens share the same neural arch morphology found in adults. Morphometric analysis suggests body lengths of the juvenile individuals that is greater than those of most adult specimens. This supports the hypothesis of developmental plasticity in Plateosaurus engelhardti that previously had been based on histological data only. Alternative hypotheses for explaining the poor correlation between ontogenetic stage and size in this taxon are multiple species or sexual morphs with little morphological variance or time-averaging of individuals frompopulations differing in
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available