''Teratosaurus'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

rauisuchia "Rauisuchia" is a paraphyletic group of mostly large and carnivorous Triassic archosaurs. Rauisuchians are a category of archosaurs within a larger group called Pseudosuchia, which encompasses all archosaurs more closely related to crocodilia ...

ns known from the

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

Stubensandstein (

Löwenstein Formation The Löwenstein Formation (Stubensandstein in Baden-Württemberg, Burgsandstein in Bavaria) is a lithostratigraphic formation of the Keuper in Germany. It is underlain by the Mainhardt Formation and overlain by the Trossingen Formation. It dates ...

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 ...

stage) of

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It is estimated to be 6 meters (19.5 ft) long.

Discovery

In 1860, Sixt Friedrich Jakob von Kapff at the ''Heslacher Wand'' near

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

discovered the upper jaw bone of a large reptile. The

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to a ...

, which

Hermann von Meyer Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer (3 September 1801 – 2 April 1869), known as Hermann von Meyer, was a German palaeontologist. He was awarded the 1858 Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. Life He was born at Frankfurt am Ma ...

declared to be distinct from ''

Belodon ''Belodon'' (meaning "arrow tooth") is a genus of phytosaur, a crocodile-like reptile that lived during the Triassic. Its fossils have been found in Europe and elsewhere. The type species, ''Belodon plieningeri'', was named by prolific German pa ...

'', was described and named by the latter as 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 ...

''Teratosaurus suevicus''. The generic name is derived from Greek τέρας, ''teras'', " minous birth of amonster" and ''sauros'', "lizard". 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 ...

refers to Suevia. 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 ...

, BMNH 38646, was found in the Mittlerer Stubensandstein. It consists of a 245 millimetres long right

maxilla The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The t ...

with six large, up to five centimetres long, teeth, erroneously interpreted by Meyer as the left maxilla. It indicates a body length of about six metres. Later authors, such as Kapff himself, von Huene, Osborn, and

Edwin H. Colbert Edwin Harris "Ned" Colbert (September 28, 1905 – November 15, 2001)O'Connor, Anahad ''The New York Times'', November 25, 2001. was a distinguished American vertebrate paleontologist and prolific researcher and author. Born in Clarinda, Iowa, he ...

, incorrectly attributed

postcrania Postcrania (postcranium, adjective: postcranial) in zoology and vertebrate paleontology is all or part of the skeleton apart from the skull. Frequently, fossil remains, e.g. of dinosaurs or other extinct tetrapods, consist of partial or isolated sk ...

of the

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 ''

Efraasia ''Efraasia'' (pronounced "E-FRAHS-ee-A") is a genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur. It was a herbivore which lived during the middle Norian stage of the Late Triassic, around 210 million years ago, in what is now Germany. It was named in 1 ...

'' to this species or genus and, as a result, it was thought to be a representative of a presumed group of carnivorous

Prosauropoda Plateosauria is a clade of sauropodomorph dinosaurs which lived during the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous. The name Plateosauria was first coined by Gustav Tornier in 1913. The name afterwards fell out of use until the 1980s. Classificati ...

or, alternatively, a very primitive

theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally c ...

. Following this lead, many popular books in the 20th century depicted "teratosaurs" as the earliest sort of large-bodied meat-eating dinosaur, walking on two legs and preying on the

prosauropod 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 ...

s of its day. It was thought by many to be a Triassic ancestor to the "

carnosaur Carnosauria is an extinct large group of predatory dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Starting from the 1990s, scientists have discovered some very large carnosaurs in the carcharodontosaurid family, such as ''Gig ...

s" of the

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

. Sauropodomorph material was described as ''Teratosaurus'' species such as ''Teratosaurus minor'' (now ''

'') and ''Teratosaurus trossingensis''. In 1985 and 1986,

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 prosaur ...

and

Michael Benton Michael James Benton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 8 April 1956) is a British palaeontologist, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the School of Earth Sciences ...

independently showed that ''Teratosaurus'' is actually a

n, a type of nondinosaurian large predatory

archosaur Archosauria () is a clade of diapsids, with birds and crocodilians as the only living representatives. Archosaurs are broadly classified as reptiles, in the cladistic sense of the term which includes birds. Extinct archosaurs include non-avian d ...

, walking on all fours, which lived alongside dinosaurs during the Late Triassic. Galton, P. M. (1985). "The poposaurid thecodontian ''Teratosaurus suevicus'' Meyer, plus referred specimens mostly based on prosauropod dinosaurs". ''Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Naturkunde'', B, 116: 1-29. Benton, M.J. (1986). "The late Triassic reptile ''Teratosaurus'' - a rauisuchian, not a dinosaur". ''

Palaeontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

'' 29: 293-301. Apart from the holotype and the sauropodomorph fossils, also some teeth probably belonging to various carnivorous archosaurs were named as ''Teratosaurus'' species. These included ''Teratosaurus lloydi'', a renaming of '' Cladeiodon lloydi'' Owen 1841 by Huene in 1908, and ''Teratosaurus bengalensis''.H.C. Das-Gupta. 1928. "Batrachian and reptilian remains found in the Panchet Beds at Deoli, Bengal". ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, New Series'' 14(13): 473-479 ''Teratosaurus silesiacus'', described in 2005 by Tomasz Sulej on the basis of a left maxilla,Sulej, T. (2005). "A new rauisuchian reptile (Diapsida: Archosauria) from the Late Triassic of Poland." ''Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology'', 25(1):78-86. was transferred to the genus ''

Polonosuchus ''Polonosuchus'' is a genus of rauisuchid known from the late Triassic (Carnian age) of Poland. It was a huge predator about 5–6 metres in length and, like all rauisuchians, was equipped with a large head of long sharp teeth. The legs were plac ...

'' by Brussatte ''et al.'' in 2009.

References

On the Classification of the Dinosauria with Observations on the Dinosauria of the Trias
- ''Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society'' (1870)

Scientific Memoirs ''Scientific Memoirs, Selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of science and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals'' was a series of books edited and published by Richard Taylor (1781–1858) in London between 1837 and 1852. Af ...

III

External links

Palaeos Mesozoic - Norian

by Ben Creisler {{Taxonbar, from=Q133113 Rauisuchids Late Triassic reptiles of Europe Fossil taxa described in 1861 Prehistoric pseudosuchian genera