What is "sauropod"

Usage examples of "sauropod".

The other saurischian stem is made up of plant eaters ancestral to the sauropods, which became the biggest land animals ever.

Unlike the sauropods, which are saurischian, or reptile-hipped dinosaurs, stegosaurs were ornithischian, or bird-hipped dinosaurs.

The Jurassic was also the time of the rise of other saurischians, one class of which made meals of many sauropods.

He has dug in the sauropod beds of the American west, and has done field paleontology on two other continents as well.

Frenchman, the Comte de Lautrec, who had his head taken off by a flick of the tail of a sauropod he annoyed.

Araucariaceae and ginkgos formed the climax forests, controlling the development of canopies where high-reaching sauropod dinosaurs may have grazed.

Because the heads of sauropod dinosaurs in particular were small and the first cervical vertebra also small and the cranio-cervical joint relatively weak, disarticulation by current action and scavengers was common.

Other natural traps in the Morrison sediments are recorded at the Howe Quarry and Quarry 13, both in Wyoming, where sauropod skeletons are abundant.

Although they are a common element to many Jurassic dinosaur assemblages, stegosaurs were geographically and temporally more restricted than their sauropod contemporaries.

A comparison of the skulls of these three groups of animals shows, however, that although the nasal openings may be similarly situated, the elephant and tapir skulls have further modifications which are not present in the sauropod skull.

In addition, sauropod teeth are arranged differently than those of ornithischians by being along the margins of the palate and jaw.

Evolution increased the strength of the vertebrae, and reduced the amount of weight of the skeleton as sauropod vertebrae have a number of cavities and vertebral connections were reduced to slender rods and struts.

The most diagnostic parts of the sauropod skeleton are the skulls and the feet, which are rarely both preserved.

Based on the better-known sauropods, a five-fold division of sauropod families can be erected which includes the following families: the Cetiosauridae, the Camarasauridae, the Diplodocidae, the Brachiosauridae, and the Titanosauridae.

In addition to these five families, a sixth, lesser-known family, the Vulcanodontidae, is also included here because of its potential significance to sauropod origins.