Life as a Sauropod

Last Thursday, July 3, 2003, scientists announced that a fossil, dug up in 1981, was the earliest known example of a sauropod. Sauropods were a group of giant plant-eating reptiles that lived between 215 million years ago (the late Triassic era) and 65 million years ago (the late Cretaceous era).

The fossil had been initially misclassified as a prosauropod, until a graduate student, Adam Yates, uncovered the error in the collections at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Prosauropods, predecessors to sauropods, are distinguished by having shorter forelimbs compared to their hind limbs. Sauropods, on the other hand, walked on four short, equal-length legs. Yates noticed that the creature's backbone showed characteristics more related to sauropods than prosauropods, and further study of the fossil supported this re-classification.

The discovery was named, Antetonitrus ingenipes, by Yates. The genus name (Antetonitrus) means ‘Before the Thunder’, and the species name (ingenipes) means ‘Massive Feet’. This newly discovered species of sauropod is believed to have lived around 215 million years ago, weigh nearly two tons (the largest animal at that time), and measure 26 to 33 feet from nose to tail. Previously the earliest known sauropod was the 210-million-year-old Isanosaurus, found in Thailand.

This week, you're going way, way, way back in time — 220 million years, to travel through the early Triassic era, the Jurassic, and the early Creataceous. You'll track down the different species of sauropods that existed during this period, then you'll get an interactive taste of life — and death — on the ground.

The Prosauropods and Sauropods

Start off your expedition at The Natural History Museum in London. Go to the Interactive gallery, and visit the Dino Directory. Read the brief introduction and What are archosaurs? How are they different from pterosaurs and crocodiles?

Go back to the Dino Directory and click on the largest dinosaur in the line-up, the very large herbivore on the left end. Sort by Time to browse the gallery. Begin with a few prosauropods, including the Plateosaurus during the Upper Triassic period to Massopondylus of the Lower Jurassic. Continue through the gallery with the sauropods, such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus of the Upper Jurassic, and Argentinosaurus and Alamosaurus of the Upper Cretaceous era.

What kinds of physical differences or similarities between the prosauropods and the sauropods did you notice? What about between species of sauropods? Where were fossils of each species recovered?

Did any of the species seem to co-exist in time and place? To see if you noticed which ones that did, visit the Living Together? section from the directory's main page. Here, you'll discover other types of dinosaur groups that lived with the sauropods and prosauropods. Click on a continent, such as Africa, South America or North America.

Journey back in time, from the Upper Cretaceous to the Upper Triassic, using the left-hand arrow at the top of the page. Take note of sauropod species (Sauropoda). Does more than one occur together? What other types of dinosaurs existed at the same time? Click on the underlined names to learn more about those non-sauropod species. Would any of those preyed upon the sauropods? Which dinosaurs are other types of herbivores? Could they have competed with sauropods for food?

Interacting with the Dinosaurs

For your next stop in the UK, you'll be Walking with Dinosaurs at BBC. Step into Dinosaur Worlds, where you'll get swept into life as it may have been millions of years ago when sauropods and prosauropods thrived.

Make sure your computer has the Shockwave plug-in, so you can play each scene. Click on your particular connection speed listed beneath each image or click on the underlined titled for the default speed (mid).

First, check out the Family Tree to get oriented. Then journey through the three earliest eras: New Blood (220 million years ago), Time of the Titans (152 million years ago), and A Cruel Sea (149 million years ago).

Read the instructions, and try to find all of the Information Panels and Actions. (Note: there is often more than one of these interactive elements on each screen shot.) You can click on a species icon that shows up in the lower right-hand corner to read the fact file.

What types of dinosaurs did you run into? Did you recognize any sauropods? How did one individual's quest for survival affect another of the same or of a different species?

What kinds of food did each species eat? How did some species evade predators? Did some dinosaurs move as a herd or were they mostly isolated from others of their kind? How do you think those behaviors influenced each individual's ability to survive? How well was each species adapted to their environment?

Lastly, it's important to understand how scientists can speculate with some accuracy that these scenes actually depict real-life as it was millions of years ago.

Visit the Science Focus section to get some answers. Here, you can explore the science related to each episode, or scene, you played earlier: New Blood, Time of the Titans, and A Cruel Sea. Click on any of the underlined links for more information about that subject, then hit your browser's Back button to return where you left off.

You can also get scientific explanations by topic at the How do we know? section. Check out any or all of these topics, including Eggs & Hatchlings, Habitat & Community, and Form & Function.

So what are some of the clues used to construct pre-history? What are some questions that still need to be answered? Do you think current or yet-to-be-discovered fossil evidence could help? Why or why not?

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Newspaper Activities

Browse issues of Targetnewspaper. Can you find any articles about dinosaurs, particularly sauropods or other herbivores? Did paleontologists uncover new fossils? Did they discover any that were improperly classified, as Adam Yates did? Have scientists recently pieced together a particular puzzle about life during the Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous period? If so, what specific clues did they use? Maybe your local museum or natural history center has received a new fossil for its collection. Where was the fossil found, and to what era does it belong? How does it contribute to our understanding of life during that period?