| Massopoda Temporal range: Late Triassic–Late Cretaceous |
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|---|---|
| Maxillary teeth of basal massopodans: Leyesaurus (a), Adeopapposaurus (b), Massospondylus (c), and Riojasaurus (d) | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | †Sauropodomorpha |
| Node: | †Plateosauria |
| Branch: | †Massopoda Yates, 2007 |
| Clades | |
The Massopoda is a clade of sauropodomorph dinosaurs which lived during the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous periods. Massopoda, which was first named by paleontologist Adam M. Yates of the University of the Witwatersrand in 2007, is a stem-based taxon and it was defined by him as all animals more closely related to Saltasaurus loricatus than to Plateosaurus engelhardti.[1]
Yates assigned the Massopoda to Plateosauria. Within the clade, he assigned the families Massospondylidae (which includes the relatively well-known dinosaur Massospondylus) and Riojasauridae (which includes Riojasaurus) as well as the core group Sauropoda.[2]
The following cladogram simplified after an analysis presented by Apaldetti and colleagues in 2011.[3]
| Massopoda |
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