''Pradhania'' (named after Dhuiya Pradhan, a fossil collector at the Indian Statistical Institute) is a genus of

massospondylid Massospondylidae is a family of early massopod dinosaurs that existed in Asia, Africa, North America, South America and AntarcticaHellert, Spencer M. "A New Basal Sauropodomorph from The Early Jurassic Hanson Formation of Antarctica." Geological ...

sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Sinemurian-age ( Early Jurassic)

Upper Dharmaram Formation The Upper Dharmaram Formation is an Early Jurassic geologic formation found in Andhra Pradesh, India. It is of Sinemurian age (Early Jurassic), and dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation.Weishampel, e ...

of India. It was first named by T. S. Kutty, Sankar Chatterjee,

Peter M. Galton Peter Malcolm Galton (born 14 March 1942 in London) is a British vertebrate paleontologist who has to date written or co-written about 190 papers in scientific journals or chapters in paleontology textbooks, especially on ornithischian and prosaur ...

and Paul Upchurch in

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

and the type species is ''Pradhania gracilis''. It was a sauropodomorph of modest size, only about four meters (13 ft) long, and is known from fragmentary remains. It was originally regarded as a

basal Basal or basilar is a term meaning ''base'', ''bottom'', or ''minimum''. Science * Basal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features associated with the base of an organism or structure * Basal (medicine), a minimal level that is nec ...

sauropodomorph but new cladistic analysis performed by Novas ''et al.'', 2011 suggests that ''Pradhania'' is a

. ''Pradhania'' presents two

synapomorphies In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to have ...

of Massospondylidae recovered in their phylogenetic analysis.

References

Massospondylidae Dinosaurs of India and Madagascar Early Jurassic dinosaurs of Asia Sinemurian life Fossil taxa described in 2007 Taxa named by Sankar Chatterjee Taxa named by Peter Galton {{Sauropodomorph-stub