Episode 214 is all about Thecodontosaurus, a Triassic sauropodomorph discovered in 1830s England.
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In this episode, we discuss:
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- Sauropodomorph that lived in the Triassic in what is now England
- Small, bipedal
- About 3.9 ft (1.2 m) long, weighed about 24 lb (11 kg)
- Largest ones estimated to be 8.2 ft (2.5 m) long
- Had a short neck and large skull, with large eyes
- Front limbs were shorter than hindlimbs
- Hands were long and narrow, and had a large claw on each
- Had five digits on its hands and feet
- Tail was longer than the rest of the body
- Had powerful back legs, could reach low hanging tree branches
- Maybe could have swam? Used its tail as a rudder and strong limbs for swimming
- Lived on a tropical island
- Herbivorous
- Had serrated, leaf-shaped teeth
- Sharp teeth could tear up leaves
- Originally thought to be carnivorous
- Name means “socket-tooth lizard”
- Found in 1834 at the Durdham Down quarry
- Originally described and named in 1836
- One of the first dinosaurs discovered (fourth or fifth named dinosaur, though Dinosauria as a concept didn’t exist until 1842)
- Thecodontosaurus was at first thought to be a weird reptile that was similar to both lizards and crocodiles
- Quarry workers found “saurian animals” remains in Bristol’s limestone quarries. They took some bones to the Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Arts, so Samuel Stutchbury could see them. He was away, so his colleague Henry Riley took a look. When Stutchbury came back, he asked for more specimens. David Williams, a country parson and geologist, was aso excited. So there was a race between Williams and Stutchbury and Riley to describe the bones.
- Stutchbury and Williams didn’t trust each other (Williams thought Stutchbury was selfish in trying to get all the fossils to the Bristol Institution, and Stutchbury thought Williams was trying to poach fossils). They both worked on descriptions of the dinosaur. However, Williams didn’t have as many fossil material as Riley and Stutchbury so he didn’t try to turn his report in 1835 into a legitimate description of the animal. Riley and Stutchbury named Thecodontosaurus and gave a short description in a talk in 1836 then finished their paper in 1838 and published in 1840
- Name refers to the roots of the teeth not being fused with the jaw bone but instead in separate tooth sockets (like modern lizards)
- Originally Riley and Stutchbury though it was a member of Squamata (lizards and snakes). Owen did not consider it to be a dinosaur (assigned it to Thecodontia in 1865). Then in 1870 Thomas Huxley found it was a dinosaur, though thought it was a Scelidosauridae. Modern analysis is still not conclusive (sometimes seen as a basal sauropodomorph, or may have come before the prosauropod-sauropod split)
- Only one valid species, the type species Thecodontosaurus antiquus (though many other species have been named)
- Species named in 1843 by John Morris, in his catalogue of British fossils
- Species name means “ancient” in Latin
- Holotype consists of a lower jaw
- Holotype was destroyed in WWII in November 1940 during the Bristol Blitz
- Some bones survived (184 are now part of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, and more fossils were later found near Bristol at Tytherington)
- About 245 fragmentary specimens are currently known
- Peter Dalton assigned another lower jaw as the neotype in 1985
- Lots of other misassigned species, some now considered to be other genera, some are dubious
- Riley and Stutchbury also found some carnivore teeth that they named Paleosaurus cylindrodon and Paleosaurus platydon. In the late 1800s, there was a theory that they were from carnivorous prosauropods, with similar bodies to Thecodontosaurus but with teeth that could slice. Arthur Smith Woodward named Thecodontosaurus platydon in 1890 based on this, and Friedrich von Huene named Thecodontosaurus cylindrodon in 1908, but now they’re both not considered valid
- Once, Thecodontosaurus fossils were mistakenly described as a different genus. In 1891, Harry Govier Seeley named Agrosaurus macgillivrayi. He thought the fossils found in 1844 that came from the northeast coast of Australia. But it was foun in 1999 that Riley and Stutchbury probably sent those bones to the British Museum of Natural History and were mislabeled. (In 1906, Friedrich von Huene said they were similar to Thecodontosaurus and named the species Thecodontosaurus macgillivrayi. Now it’s considered a junior synonym of Thecodontosaurus antiquus.
- Part of the Bristol Dinosaur Project, which for ~4 years thousands of volunteers helped gather and preserve its fossils (lots of lab, research, and outreach work)
Fun Fact: From episode 180: Stegosaur plates form from the same osteoderms that make up the armor on ankylosaurs
Sponsors:
This episode is brought to you in part by TRX Dinosaurs, which makes beautiful and realistic dinosaur sculptures, puppets, and animatronics. You can see some amazing examples and works in progress on Instagram @trxdinosaurs
And by Indiana University Press. Their Life of the Past series is lavishly illustrated and meticulously documented to showcase the latest findings and most compelling interpretations in the ever-changing field of paleontology. Find their books at iupress.indiana.edu
