#melanorosaurus

[cypressure]

lets see if we can't make some headway on the flocking backlog... here's from a few weeks back with Triceratops, Helveticosaurus, Dickinsonia, and Melanorosaurus

[ppaleoartistgallery]

#Paleostream 26/04/2025

here's today's #Paleostream flocking sketches!!!

today we sketched Triceratops, Helveticosaurus, Dickinsonia, and Melanorosaurus

[impulseimpact]

paleostream flocking 25th of april and 2nd of may 2025

triceratops helveticosaurus vesperopterylus mastodon dickinsonia melanorosaurus umoonasaurus dsungaripterus

[starryknight-dragonarts]

Horned Giant The is based on the Amargasaurus. There has been some debate whether the spines on the Amargasaurus were exposed spikes or sheathed in a sail. I believe the consensus was that they were spike not a sail, but I included a little bit of sail cause it looks cool and I can do what I want. Sauropods in Soaring have a few key similarities to Dragons though it is unclear if they are actually related or convergently evolved similar powers. One theory is that Dragons in the Tannin family are their own branch of their own in the Archosaur family or they ARE Dinosaurs, somewhere between the Sauropods and Therapods. Dragons in Soaring have a natural passive levitation ability that assists them in flight regardless of size and aerodynamics. In Soaring's Sauropods can not fly but the levitation ability in them helps to offset the weight of their bodies so they can get even bigger. They can also generate energy from vibrating the air sacs in their neck, and then once full of power they can release in a roar like a Dragon's ability to also build up energy and then release it as a breath. The Horned Giant's roar creates shock waves with an echo effect so it doesn't just hit once but as you move it creates repeat effects of the original shockwave that lessen in intensity as they continue till they fade.

Quake Titan is based on the Giraffatitan formerly known as the popular Brachiosaurus. The problem with Sauropods is that their heads are small and round relative to their bodies so they have a tendency to end up from the rest of the fossil so we have a bad tendency of getting them mixed up which lead to the who Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus division. Well what we once thought were the bones of Brachiosaurus have been determined to be a different relative, Giraffatitan, now Giraffatitan is one species and Brachiosaurus is a different species. The Quake Titan have the power to raise sand and earth storms from the ground that can cause mass destruction in an area around their migration path but they also create trails through rough terrain and raise fertile earth from the ground that can help boost the growth of plants so there are more plants to eat when they eventually migrate back around.

Tree Giant The Tree Giant is based on the Melanorosaurus, a very early sauropod from the Triassic, and while small compared to later Sauropods it was actually one of the largest creatures of it's time and also was an Omnivore, not a strict herbivore like later Sauropods. Thanks too it's small size, it can not use it to fly, but it can help climb moderately well and slow their decent while in the air and travel quickly through forests. They can also release a concussive sonic blast from their mouth that can paralyze possible threats or prey knocking them out or paralyzing them so the tree giant can get away quickly or swallow an small animal whole.

Club Giant is based on the Shunosaurus and the Spinophorosaurus, two Sauropods that had a spiked club and thagomizer tail! It almost feels like cheating, a Sauropod with Ankylosaur and Stegosaurus weapons, but as I have learned many times now, nature never gives anything to us straight and doesn't care about our preconceived notions or classifications. Rather than channeling the power outwardly, the Club Giant can channel it instead throughout their body so they can move with greater agility than their size would suggest, and stretch their tail like rubber in order to move it around with fluid motions

Thunder Titan The Thunder Titan is based on one of my all time favorite dinosaurs, the Paralititan (Name means "Tidal Giant") . Fun story: When I was a little kid, for one of my birthdays I went to the Natural history Museum in the city, and got to go in back to one of the Lab areas where they had a Leg bone from what was the newly discovered Paralitaitan. Then over a decade later I took a course in college on paleontology and told my professor the story about the Paralititan...funnily enough...She was on the team that FOUND the Paralititan! Really is a small world after all! Few creatures inspire the sort of awe and fear in dragons that comes from the approach of a heard of Thunder Titans. Their massive size scales taller that any dragon and store a lot more power. Their footsteps shake the earth, the howl of their voices send tremors through the air and make waves in the water, and wherever they travel they bring massive storms with them that can completely change the landscape around them destroying what was old and then revitalizing the earth for new life to grow quickly and flourish till the next time they come around.

[veloci-raptor]

Flocking Together #81

Triceratops/Helveticosaurus

Dickinsonia/Melanorosaurus

[ildarotyrannus]

Melanorosaurus readi is a massive basal sauropodomorph known from the Lower Elliot Formation (Late Triassic of South Africa). Many bones of South African sauropodomorphs have been attributed to this taxon, but some of them may belong to other animals. For example, the skull described in 2007 comes from the Early Jurassic Upper Elliot formation, so its attribution to Melanorosaurus is questionable. This year, a re-description of the taxon and clarification of the ownership of its remains were published: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/1 … Melanorosaurus reached a length of 8 m. The massive bones of the limbs indicate the four-legged nature of this animal. It belongs to the Sauropodiformes group, from which the true sauropods descended.

Paint 3D, 2024.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Melanorosaurus readi

By Tas Dixon

Etymology: Black Mountain Reptile

First Described By: Haughton, 1924 

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Bagualosauria, Plateosauria, Massopoda, Sauropodiformes, Anchisauria, Melanorosauridae 

Time and Place: From 210 until 201 million years ago, possibly into the Jurassic, from the Norian through the Rhaetian (and possibly into the Hettangian) of the Late Triassic

Melanorosaurus is known from the Lower Elliot (and, maybe, the Upper Elliot) Formation of South Africa

Physical Description: Melanorosaurus was a later Sauropodomorph, the group of dinosaurs that includes Sauropods and their close relatives (aka, “Prosauropods”). Melanorosaurus was technically not a Sauropod, but it does highlight how these quadrupedal behemoths evolved from basic dinosaur precursors. It was quadrupedal, but with awkward front feet still retaining hand-like qualities of its forefathers. The hindlimbs were more sturdy, and in general the pillar-like proportions of the limbs helped to hold up its great weight. It was probably up to 8 meters long and 2 meters tall, making it one of the heaviest animals in its environment - weighing about 1.3 tons. It had a pointed, triangular snout, and teeth like earlier Prosauropods rather than proper Sauropods. It had a short neck and long tail, with a very thick trunk. As for external appearance, there is a question - it was small enough, just, to still have fluff, but it also was big enough to have lost it in the interest of keeping cool. Given it lived in a particularly hot climate, it makes sense that some - if not all - of the warm fluff of its ancestors may have been shed off. That said, it also lived southward - so it’s possible that the Elliot had a cooler environment than other places of the Late Triassic. All in all, the fluff status of Melanorosaurus is a question, so here we present it fluffy to some extent, since most interpretations of it are scaly. 

Diet: Melanorosaurus would have been an herbivore, but it may have fed occasionally on small animals to supplement its diet, especially since Melanorosaurus had the teeth of its omnivorous precursors.

By Ripley Cook

Behavior: Melanorosaurus was a smaller Sauropodomorph, so it probably would have taken care of its young (like its close relative Massospondylus) in nests and potential family structures. These nests are hypothetical, however, so we can’t say what sort of lifestyle Melanorosaurus would have lead in this regard. It probably would have stuck together in herds for safety from large contemporaneous predators, and moved together across the dry landscape of their environment looking for new sources of food. Given they managed to survive the end-Triassic extinction (probably), this was clearly a successful strategy to some extent. Their short necks means that they probably would have had to feed mainly on low-lying vegetation, though it is entirely likely that they could have reared on their hind limbs in order to reach higher sources of food. Since they still had some traits of bipedality (likely vestigial), this seems more likely than not. 

Ecosystem: The Elliot Formation was a highly arid sub-tropical desert, filled with hearty conifers (which did a lot of the desert-plant jobs before cacti evolved) lining seasonal rivers that would dry up come the long harsh season. It was cooler than other places in the Triassic, but still quite hot and harsh, making it a baking environment for the creatures that lived there. The exact composition of each environment - the Lower Triassic part of the environment and the Upper Jurassic part - is difficult to determine, because the levels tend to be hard to define, but some work has been done on this in recent years. Other Sauropodomorphs included Plateosauravus, Eucnemesaurus, and Bikanasaurus - so, some not very well preserved species, making Melanorosaurus an exception in this region. There was also the Mammaliaform Elliotherium and the Dicynodont Pentasaurus. However, literally every other example of creature seems to be from the Upper Elliot, so it is uncertain what the predators of Melanorosaurus would have been.  

By José Carlos Cortés 

Other: Melanorosaurus is such an almost-Sauropod that its description and study often threatens to redefine exactly what it means to be a Sauropod or… not. As such, Melanorosaurus is literally defined out of Sauropoda, with Sauropods defined as those members of the sauropod-y group more closely related to Saltasaurus than to Melanorosaurus. That said, Melanorosaurus has a significant amount of similarities to later Sauropods, one of the weirder and more magnificent experiments of Triassic dinosaurs - and a sign of the scale of dinosaurs to come after this period of experimentation ends. 

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources Under the Cut

Fabrègues, P. C. d., R. Allain. 2016. New material and revision of Melanorosaurus thabanensis, a basal sauropodomorph from the Upper Triassic of Lesotho. PeerJ 4: e1639. 

Galton, P. M., P. Upchurch. “Prosauropoda”. In D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, & H. Osmólska (eds.). 2004. The Dinosauria (second edition). University of California Press, Berkeley 232 - 258. 

Galton, P. M., J. Van Heerden, A. M. Yates. 2005. Postcranial Anatomy of Referred Specimens of the Sauropodomorph Dinosaur Melanorosaurus from the Upper Triassic of South Africa. Tidwell, V. & K. Carpenter (eds.)Thunder-Lizards: The Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs. Indiana University Press. 

Gauffre, F. X. 1993. The most recent Melanorosauridae (Saurischia, Prosauropoda), Lower Jurassic of Lesotho, with remarks on the prosauropod phylogeny. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie Monatshefte. 1993 (11): 648 - 654. 

Haughton, S. H. 1924. The fauna and stratigraphy of the Stormberg Series. Annals of the South African Museum 12: 323 - 497. 

McPhee, B. W., J. N. Choiniere, A. M. Yates and P. A. Viglietti. 2015. A second species of Eucnemesaurus Van Hoepen, 1920 (Dinosauria, Sauropodomorpha): new information on the diversity and evolution of the sauropodomorph fauna of South Africa's lower Elliot Formation (latest Triassic). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 35(5):e980504:1-24. 

McPhee, B. W., E. M. Bordy, L. Sciscio, J. N. Choiniere. 2017. The sauropodomorph biostratigraphy of the Elliot Formation of southern Africa: Tracking the evolution of Sauropodomorpha across the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 62 (3): 441 - 465. 

Paul, G. S. 2010. The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press: 170. 

Yates, A. M. 2007. The first complete skull of the Triassic dinosaur Melanorosaurus Haughton (Sauropodmorpha: Anchisauria), in Barrett, P. M. & D. J. Batten. Special Papers in Paleontology 77: 9 - 55. 

Yates, A. M. 2010. A revision of the problematic sauropodomorph dinosaurs from Manchester, Connecticut and the status of Anchisaurus Marsh. Palaeontology 53 (4): 739 - 752. 

[tsaagan]

Animatronic dinosaurs from Heureka