''Schleitheimia'' (named after the type locality of Schleitheim), is an extinct genus of sauropodiform

sauropodomorph Sauropodomorpha ( ; from Greek, meaning "lizard-footed forms") is an extinct clade of long-necked, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaurs that includes the sauropods and their ancestral relatives. Sauropods generally grew to very large sizes, had lon ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

, from the Gruhalde Member of

Klettgau Formation The Klettgau Formation is a geological formation in Switzerland. It is Late Triassic in age, covering most of the mid to late Norian, the Carnian, and into the Rhaetian, spanning a period of 26-30 million years.Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

, ''Schleitheimia schutzi'' was formally described in 2020.

Discovery and naming

The type material was collected between 1952 and 1954 by Emil Schutz. They were donated to the

University of Zürich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...

in 1955. In 1986, most of the material was described by

Peter 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 prosa ...

, who referred them all to the species ''

Plateosaurus engelhardti ''Plateosaurus'' (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of Plateosauridae, plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic Period (geology), period, around 214 to 204 timeline of the evolution ...

''. In 2020, Oliver Rauhut, Femke Holwerda and Heinz Furrer redescribed most of Schutz's remains, as well as some remains in the collections of the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen and new remains from a excavation in 2016 led by Holwerda. They found that the earlier found remains represented a new genus and species, which they named ''Schleitheimia schultzi'', honoring the type locality and the discoverer of the type remains. The 2016 finds were not referred. Finds made by Schultz near Hallau-Schwärzibuck were considered to represent a different new taxon and remained unnamed. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

, PIMUZ A/III 550, was found in a layer of the Klettgau Formation dating from the

Norian The Norian is a division of the Triassic Period. It has the rank of an age (geochronology) or stage (chronostratigraphy). It lasted from ~227 to million years ago. It was preceded by the Carnian and succeeded by the Rhaetian. Stratigraphic defi ...

. It consists of a partial right ilium. Several other bones from the general locality were designated as

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). Of ...

s. Because they are consistent in morphology, the describers referred all of them to the same taxon, if not the same individual.

Description

The holotype of ''Schleitheimia'' shows a number of

autapomorphies In phylogenetics, an autapomorphy is a distinctive feature, known as a derived trait, that is unique to a given taxon. That is, it is found only in one taxon, but not found in any others or outgroup taxa, not even those most closely related to t ...

, unique derived traits. There is a broad, rounded ridge on the iliac blade that ends in a large, rounded expansion on the ilium. The fourth tronchanter of the ilium is very robust. The crista tibiofibularis of the femur is broad and there is no posteriorly facing shelf is present lateral to the crista.

Classification

phylogenetic analysis In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

conducted by Rauhut and colleagues found ''Schleitheimia'' to be a derived sauropodiform closely related to

Sauropoda Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their bo ...

, or a basal member of that clade, depending on the definition used (node or stem based). A

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ...

from that analysis is shown below:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q96777241 Sauropodomorphs Norian genera Late Triassic dinosaurs of Europe Triassic Switzerland Fossils of Switzerland Fossil taxa described in 2020