Tornieria
Name: Tornieria
(named after Gustav Tornier).
Phonetic: Tor-ne-re-ah.
Named By: Richard Sternfeld - 1911.
Synonyms: Barosaurus africanus,
Gigantosaurus africanus, Tornieria gracilis?.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Diplodocidae, Diplodocinae.
Species: T. africana (type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Unavailable.
Known locations: Tanzania - Tendaguru
Formation, and Zimbabwe - Kadzi Formation.
Time period: Late Kimmeridgian to the Tithonian of
the Jurassic.
Fossil representation: Partial skull and postcranial
remains.
Tornieria fossils were first found in 1907 and described the next year by the German palaeontologist Eberhard Fraas. However, at this time Fraas decided to call the new genus Gigantosaurus, but the problem with this is that the name Gigantosaurus had already been used by Harry Govier Seeley to name a genus of sauropod from England. Fraas did not see this as a problem; he considered Seeley’s description not complete enough as well as being seen as a synonym to another genus called Ornithopsis. Fraas however was wrong to do this on two counts, one being that as soon as a name has been logged and classified it cannot be used again. Second, even if a name is later found to be a synonym of another name, it still cannot be used, otherwise it creates the potential of confusion in further studies.
Fortunately
another palaeontologist named Richard Sternfield put things right in
1911 when he took the African fossils and created the genus
Tornieria, named in honour of a herpetologist
(someone who studies
reptiles and amphibians) named Gustav Tornier. At this time there
were two species named as T. africana and T.
robusta based upon two
species outlined by Fraas in 1908.
Things
were fairly stable for the genus until 1922 when another
palaeontologist named Werner Janensch moved T. africana
to the North
American genus Barosaurus.
Normally this would mean that the second
species T. robusta would need to be named as a
new genus since there
would be no type species to refer to, but this did not happen until
1991 when Rupert Wild named Janenschia.
This meant that for a time
the Torneria genus ceased to exist save for
mentions of synonyms to
Barosaurus and Janenschia.
Then
in 2006 Torneria returned. The decision to
place the former type
species T. africana in with Barosaurus
by Werner Janensch never sat
well with most palaeontologists since North America and Africa should
have been totally isolated from each other by the late Jurassic,
making the presence of the same genus of terrestrial animal upon both
continents highly unlikely to impossible given the circumstances. In
this year a study by Kristian Remes proved that the T.
africana
material was different to Barosaurus material and
therefore should be
rightfully treated as a distinct genus.
Today
Torneria is established as a distinct genus of
diplodocid sauropod,
though one that is
similar to Barosaurus. The differences between
these two genera are
mainly seen in the proportions of the limb bones and in the form of the
anterior (frontal) caudal (tail) vertebrae. Further
differences between them are hard to point out due to lack of remains
for other body parts across both genera. This is a good point to
return to the other former species T. robustus
which was now known as
Janenschia. The re-evaluation of the T.
robustus
fossils saw them
identified as belonging to a titanosaur, meaning that they actually
should never have been described as belonging to Torneria
(originally
Gigantosaurus robustus by Fraas) in the first
place. Therefore
Janenschia remains valid as a titanosaur genus,
while Torneria
remains based upon only the species T. africanus.
That
should wrap things up with regards to classification, but there is
one more loose end. In 1961 Werner Janensch had named a gracile
form of T. africanus, though remember that at
this time T.
africanus had been labelled as an African species of Barosaurus.
This was known as B. africanus var. gracilis,
though in 1980
it was renamed as a full species, B. gracilis.
This would mean a
second species of Torneria by modern
classification, though as
pointed out by Remes in 2006, not only is this species not
represented by a holotype, there is no diagnosis for it either,
meaning that the species cannot be held as valid.
As
a diplodocid sauropod, Torneria can be further
classified as a member
of the Diplodocinae. This group represents the more lightly built
diplodocids which are notably more gracile than the apatosaurines which
were physically more heavily built. As with its relatives, Torneria
would have been browsers of plants, sweeping their necks in wide arcs
so that they could browse with only the minimum of necessary movement
of their legs.
Further reading
- Dinosaurierfunde in Ostafrika - E. Fraas - 1908.
- Zur Nomenklatur der Gattung Gigantosaurus
Fraas [On the
nomenclature of the genus Gigantosaurus Fraas] -
Richard
Sternfield - 1911.
- Das Handskelett von Gigantosaurus robustus und Brachiosaurus
brancai aus den Tendaguru-Schichten Deutsch- Ostafrikas
- W.
Janensch - 1922.
- Paleoecology of the dinosaurs of Tendaguru (Tanzania) - D.
Russell, P. Beland & J. McIntosh - 1980.
- Revision of the Tendaguru sauropod Tornieria africana
(Fraas)
and its relevance for sauropod paleobiogeography - Kristian Remes
- 2006.
- A phylogenetic analysis of Diplodocoidea (Saurischia:
Sauropoda). - J. A. Whitlock - 2011.
Random favourites
 |
 |
 |
 |