Tuebingosaurus, a new name for an old sauropodomorph specimen from Germany

[VD231991]

A new paper is now available online describing a new genus and species of sauropodiform from the Late Triassic of southern Germany:

Regalado Fernández, O.R., and Werneburg, I., 2022. A new massopodan sauropodomorph from Trossingen Formation (Germany) hidden as ' Plateosaurus' for 100 years in the historical Tübingen collection. Vertebrate Zoology 72: 771–822. doi:10.3897/vz.72.e86348.

Lest anyone forget, Tuebingosaurus maierfritzorum isn't a newly discovered sauropodomorph but instead is a new name for a specimen found in 1922 that the German paleontologist Friedrich von Huene referred to the nominal species 'Gresslyosaurus plieningeri' in his 1932 monograph on Saurischia. This specimen, long catalogued as GPIT IV but now assigned the catalog number GPIT-PV-30787, was for a long time seen as referable to Plateosaurus, but the new paper by Regalado Fernández and Werneburg demonstrates that GPIT-PV-30787 is actually not a plateosaurid but instead referable to Sauropodiformes (the authors don't formally assign this genus to Sauropoda, but given the results of their cladistic analysis, Tuebingosaurus is basically a sauropod under a strict phylogenetic scheme). Given the description of Schleitheimia from Switzerland and as-yet-unpublished results indicating that Gresslyosaurus is a distinct taxon from Schleitheimia, it is apparent that the cladistic diversity of non-sauropod sauropodomorphs from the Late Triassic of mainland Europe is greater than previously thought and is consistent with the cladistic diversity of sauropodomorphs from the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic of Gondwana. Interestingly, sauropodomorph remains from Ellingen, Bavaria that Moser (2003) referred to Plateosaurus engelhardti are considered to be a probable melanorosaurid based on morphometric analysis, signaling that more than one clade of sauropodiforms co-existed in southern Germany and Switzerland during the Late Triassic.

Moser, M., 2003. Plateosaurus engelhardti Meyer, 1837 (Dinosauria: Sauropodomorpha) from the Feuerletten (Middle Keuper; Upper Triassic) of Bavaria. Zitteliana B 24: 3–186.

[Halichoeres]

Good to see some progress on revising the much-too-capacious genus Plateosaurus.