Plateosaurus is a large bipedal sauropodomorph that lived in Europe and North America during the Late Triassic. Plateosaurus consists of two species in Prehistoric Kingdom: P. trossingensis and P. gracilis.
Plateosaurus is a large bipedal sauropodomorph that lived in Europe and North America during the Late Triassic. Plateosaurus consists of two species in Prehistoric Kingdom: P. trossingensis and P. gracilis.
In Game[]
Description[]
Plateosaurus is closely related to more derived sauropodomorphs including Sauropods themselves, and shares some common features with them, including a long neck and herbivorous diet. However, unlike sauropods, Plateosaurus was an obligate biped. Plateosaurus is also much more fleet-footed than its larger kin, and bears a set of ferocious claws on its forelimbs. Plateosaurus has a very wide range of sizes for adult specimens in-game, which is something seen in the fossils of these dinosaurs.
Management[]
To be announced.
In-Game Trivia[]
Nigel Marven
Plateosaurus represents an incredibly ancient group of dinosaurs that predates the huge sauropods we all know and love.
Nigel Marven
The earliest relatives of the sauropods are often called the “prosauropods”, but “Prosauropoda” isn’t an accepted taxonomic group nowadays. Instead, Plateosaurus and its relatives are called basal sauropodomorphs. Still, I’ve found that most paleontologists know what you mean regardless.
Nigel Marven
The name “Plateosaurus” has nothing to do with dishware, but with those stubby arms it’s very easy to imagine them carrying a plate to an all you can eat salad buffet.
Nigel Marven
One of my German colleagues at the Verband der Zoologischen Gärten wrote to congratulate me on our first Plateosaurus hatchling. He said that apparently, Germans have fondly nicknamed Plateosaurus “lindwurm” after old tales of dragon-like serpents. Perhaps we’d better theme its paddock like a castle!
Paleontology[]
Plateosaurus is one of the most famous and well know of the "prosauropods", this paraphyletic group of non-sauropod sauropodomorph dinosaurs lived during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic and were ancestors to the sauropod family which also evolved in the Late Triassic. Early sauropodomorphs evolved from small bipedal saurischian dinosaurs and began as small theropod-like omnivores such as Eoraptor, Buriolestes, Panphagia and Saturnalia. As time progressed, some of these linages began to become more herbivorous and larger with noticeably longer necks. Eventually, a group of these sauropodomorphs became able to use their forelimbs in locomotion, which then later led to the fully quadrupedal true sauropods such as Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurus and Argentinosaurus, among others. While Plateosaurus itself was likely not the direct ancestor of these later giants, it gives us a close look at how these magnificent animals came to be.
In life, Plateosaurus was a bipedal animal, although older reconstructions would often show the animal walking on all fours and two legs interchangeably in a similar fashion to hadrosaurs such as Edmontosaurus. It has since been found that the structure of Plateosaurus's forelimbs would not have allowed for this motion in a locomotory capacity. Plateosaurus is also known from a wealth of fossil materials, with many coming from a probable mud mire where many became trapped and were subsequently scavenged by lighter carnivores that did not sink through. The many fossils of this animal also show that adults of the same species varied widely in size, from 4.8 to 10 meters, one of the most extreme ranges known in dinosaurs.
Plateosaurus was named in 1837, several years before the creation of the Dinosauria clade. Many of the fossils know were found in Germany but has also been found in France, Switzerland and Norway. Remains found in North America and Greenland have also been attributed to Plateosaurus, but this is in doubt. Its name meaning is not entirely clear since the original description contains no information, various authors have offered different interpretations and "Broad Lizard" is the most widely accepted.
While the species "Plateosaurus engelhardti" was used as the type species of Plateosaurus for many years, in 2019 it was deemed to be undiagnostic and was replaced by P. trossingensis as the type species.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Plateosaurus is the most widely known non-sauropod sauropodomorph thanks to its featuring in media such as Walking with Dinosaurs, although it did not live in the same environment as its co-stars Coelophysis, Postosuchus and Placerias.
- It is the second Triassic animal in Prehistoric Kingdom, with the first being Coelophysis.
- The sounds of Plateosaurus in-game use samples of budgerigars, young Monk Vultures, crows, Cape Vultures and more.
- During the leadup to its unveiling in April 2024's Dev Diary it was teased by developers on the Prehistoric Kingdom Discord as "The God Dinosaur", in reference to a long-running server joke which deified the sauropodomorph as "Lord Plateo". The addition status of another server joke deity - the fish Lepidotes - is unknown.
- Plateosaurus has often been reconstructed and depicted as a quadrupedal animal, walking on its front limbs. This has turned out to be incorrect, as Plateosaurus was unable to position its hands in a way conducive to walking on all 4 limbs, making it an obligate biped. This modern view of this animal's locomotion is reflected in Prehistoric Kingdom.
- Plateosaurus shares its in-game rig with Muttaburrasaurus and Ouranosaurus despite some differing proportions.
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