Anchisauria is an extinct clade of sauropodomorphdinosaurs that lived from the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous. The name Anchisauria was first used by Galton and Upchurch in the second edition of The Dinosauria. It is a node-based taxon containing the most recent common ancestor of Anchisaurus polyzelus and Melanorosaurus readi, and all its descendants.[3] Galton and Upchurch assigned a family of dinosaurs to the Anchisauria: the Melanorosauridae. The more common prosauropods Plateosaurus and Massospondylus were placed in the sister clade Plateosauria.
However, research has since indicated that Anchisaurus is closer to sauropods than traditional prosauropods; thus, Anchisauria would by definition also include Sauropoda.[4]
The following cladogram simplified after an analysis presented by Blair McPhee and colleagues in 2014.[5]
^Yates, Adam M. (2010). "A revision of the problematic sauropodomorph dinosaurs from Manchester, Connecticut and the status of Anchisaurus Marsh". Palaeontology. 53 (4): 739–752. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2010.00952.x.
^McPhee, B. W.; Yates, A. M.; Choiniere, J. N.; Abdala, F. (2014). "The complete anatomy and phylogenetic relationships of Antetonitrus ingenipes(Sauropodiformes, Dinosauria): Implications for the origins of Sauropoda". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 171: 151–205. doi:10.1111/zoj.12127.
Sources[]
Galton, P. M. & Upchurch, P. (2004). "Prosauropoda". In D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, & H. Osmólska (eds.), The Dinosauria (second edition). University of California Press, Berkeley 232–258.
Yates, Adam M. (2007), "The first complete skull of the Triassic dinosaur Melanorosaurus Haughton (Sauropodomorpha: Anchisauria)", in Barrett, Paul M. & Batten, David J., Special Papers in Palaeontology, vol. 77, pp. 9–55, ISBN978-1-4051-6933-2
