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South American Non-Gravisaurian Sauropodiformes and the Early Trend Towards Gigantism

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South American Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs

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Abstract

Sauropodomorpha was an herbivorous clade of dinosaurs that lived through nearly the entire Mesozoic Era. Sauropodomorphs appeared at the end of the Triassic as small and gracile forms and evolved into the largest land animals that ever lived on Earth. This evolutionary path towards giant forms implied several skeletal modifications and anatomical innovations already recorded at the end of the Triassic that continued to develop throughout the rest of the Mesozoic. Recent discoveries of early-diverging Sauropodiformes from Gondwana shed light on this crucial stage in the history of the group, providing new information about the origin of gigantism among Sauropodomorpha. Non-gravisaurian sauropodiform is the grade of dinosaurs that—despite not being characterized by typical derived or ‘sauropod-like’ features, often regarded as a prerequisite for gigantism (long neck, columnar-limbed, obligated quadrupedal posture)—show the first clear steps towards gigantism. This group is known by moderately gracile to robust forms that attained large body size during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. The South American record is restricted to Argentina, including two early-branching forms from Patagonia (Mussaurus patagonicus and Leonerasaurus taquetrensis) and the lessemsaurids Lessemsaurus sauropoides and Ingentia prima, from the north-western region of that country. Here we provide a comprehensive review of these four taxa, highlighting the main plesiomorphic and derived traits that relate them to both early-diverging (Massopoda) and late-diverging (Gravisauria) sauropodomorphs, positioning them as the first steps towards gigantism on Earth.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the editors of this issue for the invitation to participate. We thank Adam Marsh and Blair McPhee for their valuable comments that improved this manuscript. We thank the support from the Agencia de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica—ANPCyT (PICT 2016-236), CICITCA-UNSJ grants (to CA and RNM), Sepkoski Grant (to CA), and Secretaría de Ciencia Gobierno de San Juan (SECITI to RNM).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IMCN, Instituto y Museo de Ciencias Naturales, FCEFN, Universidad Nacional de San Juan, San Juan Province, San Juan, 5400, Argentina

    Cecilia Apaldetti & Ricardo N. Martínez

  2. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and Centro de Investigaciones de La Geósfera y Biósfera (CIGEOBIO), San Juan, Argentina

    Cecilia Apaldetti

Authors
  1. Cecilia Apaldetti
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  2. Ricardo N. Martínez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cecilia Apaldetti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, CONICET - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, La Plata, Argentina

    Alejandro Otero

  2. Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio, CONICET - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Trelew, Argentina

    José L. Carballido

  3. Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio, CONICET - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Trelew, Argentina

    Diego Pol

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Apaldetti, C., Martínez, R.N. (2022). South American Non-Gravisaurian Sauropodiformes and the Early Trend Towards Gigantism. In: Otero, A., Carballido, J.L., Pol, D. (eds) South American Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs. Springer Earth System Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95959-3_3

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