''Eucnemesaurus'' (; meaning "good tibia lizard", for its robust
tibiae) is a basal
sauropodomorph dinosaur genus usually considered to be a synonym of ''
Euskelosaurus''. Recent study by Yates (2006), however, indicates that it is valid and the same animal as putative "giant
herrerasaurid
Herrerasauridae is a family of carnivorous dinosaurs, possibly basal to either theropods or even all of saurischians, or even their own branching from dracohors, separate from dinosauria altogether. They are among the oldest known dinosaurs, fi ...
" ''Aliwalia''.
''Eucnemesaurus'' was named in 1920 by
Egbert Cornelis Nicolaas van Hoepen. The
type species is ''Eucnemesaurus fortis''. The
specific name Specific name may refer to:
* in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database
In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules:
* Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...
means "strong" in
Latin. It is based on
holotype TrM 119, a partial skeleton including
vertebrae, part of a
pubis, a
femur, and two
tibiae. The remains were found by Van Hoepen in the
late Carnian-
early Norian-age
Upper Triassic Lower Elliot Formation
The Elliot Formation is a geological formation and forms part of the Stormberg Group, the uppermost geological group that comprises the greater Karoo Supergroup. Outcrops of the Elliot Formation have been found in the northern Eastern Cape, sou ...
of the
Slabberts district,
Orange Free State,
South Africa.
Yates assigned the genus to the new family
Riojasauridae, with ''
Riojasaurus
''Riojasaurus'' (meaning "Rioja lizard") was a herbivorous sauropodomorph dinosaur named after La Rioja Province in Argentina where it was found in the Los Colorados Formation in the Ischigualasto-Villa Unión Basin by José Bonaparte. It lived ...
'', usually regarded as a
melanorosaurid
The Melanorosauridae were a family of sauropodomorph dinosaurs which lived during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. The name Melanorosauridae was first coined by Friedrich von Huene in 1929. Huene assigned several families of dinosaurs to t ...
.
''Aliwalia''
Fossil material now assigned to ''Eucnemesaurus'' was once placed in a separate genus and
species, ''Aliwalia rex'' (the
generic name was taken from the
Aliwal Park Reserve Aliwal may refer to:
*Aliwal, Taran Taran, a village in the Indian state of Punjab
*Aliwal, Jalandhar, a village in the Indian state of Punjab
* Battle of Aliwal fought in 1846 between the British and the Sikhs
* Aliwal North
Aliwal North (offi ...
in the
Union of South Africa, where the first remains were found). The
fossil evidence of this species was comparably small, with for many years only
femoral fragments and a
maxilla known, having been sent from South Africa to
Austria in 1873 in a shipment with prosauropod bones.
The size of the femur led many
palaeontologists to believe (along with the clearly carnivorous maxilla), that ''Aliwalia'' was a
carnivorous
A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...
dinosaur of remarkable size for the age in which lived. It would have been comparable to that of the large
Jurassic and
Cretaceous theropods, such as ''
Allosaurus'', that evolved tens of millions of years after ''Aliwalia''. The original material was believed to bear a strong similarity to the
South American ''
Herrerasaurus'', so much so that ''Aliwalia'' was originally classified in
Herrerasauridae by
Peter Galton.
However, later re-evaluation of the material has shown that the maxilla assigned to ''Aliwalia'' does not, unlike the other material, belong to ''Eucnemesaurus'', as it is clearly from a carnivore. In addition, new material clearly demonstrates this latter genus' sauropodomorph affinities.
Sources
*E. C. N. van Hoepen (1920).
Contributions to the knowledge of the reptiles of the Karroo Formation. 6. Further dinosaurian material in the Transvaal Museum, ''Annals of the Transvaal Museum'' 7(2): 93-141
* Yates, A.M. (2006). "Solving a dinosaurian puzzle: the identity of ''Aliwalia rex'' Galton". ''Historical Biology'', 1–31
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q133173
Sauropodomorphs
Carnian genera
Norian genera
Late Triassic dinosaurs of Africa
Triassic South Africa
Fossils of South Africa
Fossil taxa described in 1920
Taxa named by Egbert Cornelis Nicolaas van Hoepen