Daily Dinosaur #17 - Adeopapposaurus, Far Eating

Today, January 17, 2018, (don't be fooled by the calendar!) is the seventeeth day of my Daily Dinosaur series, where I draw a scientifically acurrate dinosaur and a human doing funny things. Today, I have chosen the massospondylid sauropodomorph, Adeopapposaurus mognai.

Adeopapposaurus was a basal sauropodomorph, formerly "prosauropod", from the Early Jurassic of Argentina. More specifically, it was a massospondylid, a group that also includes Glacialisaurus, Lufengosaurus and Massospondylus.

A defining characteristic of the Sauropodomorpha, and their descendants the Sauropoda, is an extremely elongated neck that was used to gather plants. This was achieved early on in sauropod evolution; as by the Late Triassic 10 meter (30 foot) giants with 2 meter (6 foot) long necks had already appeared. 

Those long necks supported a usually disproportionately tiny head that had a wide range of feeding styles. The macronarians had short, boxy heads, and the diplodocids had long, flat heads. The sauropodomorphs all looked the same, however, except for Adeopapposaurus, which had a keratinous beak at the end of its mouth. It is this characteristic that gave it its name of "far-eating lizard".

Here I have reconstructed an Adeopapposaurus using its long neck to reach for a plate of leaves in the middle of a table, as its owner expressionlessly looks on. This calls into mind the tanystropheid reptiles of the Triassic (although they couldn't stretch their necks like that)

That's all for now folks! Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

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This reconstruction is based on Martinez, 2009.