In Depth
Gyposaurus is a genus of sauropodomorph dinosaur that technically does not exist anymore. Two species have been named, the type species G. capensis from South Africa, and G. sinensis from China. Doubts were cast upon the validity of the type species in 1976 when a study by Galton and Cluver came to the opinion that G. capensis was actually a specimen of Anchisaurus. In 1981 however, Michael Cooper synonymized G. capensis with Massopondylus, something that has gained popular acceptance among other palaeontologists.
Now that the type species of Gyposaurus has been invalidated, G. sinensis cannot really be referred to as Gyposaurus since the fossils that the species were originally compared to are no longer part of the genus. In the past G. sinensis has also been considered to be a synonym to another genus, this time Lufengosaurus, a very common sauropodomorph known from China’s Lufeng Formation, the same fossil formation that the fossils of G. sinensis came from. However in 2004, a study by Galton and Upchurch came to the conclusion that G. sinensis most probably represents its own genus.
Great care should be taken not to confuse Gyposaurus with Gryposaurus, a genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur that lived during the late Cretaceous.
Further Reading
- On the dinosaurs of the Stormberg, South Africa. Annals of the South African Museum 7(4):291-308. - R. Broom - 1911. – Gyposaurus sinensis Young (sp. nov.) a new Prosauropoda from the Upper Triassic beds at Lufeng, Yunnan. – Bulletin of the Geological Society of China. 21 (2–4): 205–252. – C. C. Young – 1941. - Anchisaurus capensis (Broom) and a revision of the Anchisauridae (Reptilia, Saurischia). Annals of the South African Museum 69(6):121-159.- P. M. Galton & M. A. Cluver - 1976. - The prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus carinatus Owen from Zimbabwe: its biology, mode of life and phylogenetic significance. - Occasional Papers of the National Museums and Monuments of Rhodesia, Series B, Natural Sciences 6(10):689-840. - Michael R. Cooper - 1981. - Prosauropoda - P. M. Galton & P. Upchurch. In The Dinosauria (second edition), D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, & H. Osm�lska (eds.) - University of California Press:Berkeley. – Taxonomy of “Gyposaurus” sinesis Young, 1941 from the Early Jurassic Lufeng Formation of Yunnan Province, southwestern China. – SVP 2017 Meeting Program and Abstracts. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 77th Annual Meeting. Calgary: Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. p. 210. – Y. M. Wang, H. L. You, A. Otero & T. Wang – 2017.
