Anchisauria

Anchisauria Temporal range: Late Triassic—Late Cretaceous, 228–66Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Life restoration of Anchisaurus
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Suborder:	†Sauropodomorpha
Clade:	†Sauropodiformes
Clade:	†Anchisauria Galton & Upchurch, 2004
Subgroups[1][2]
†Aardonyx †Anchisaurus †Antetonitrus †Blikanasaurus †Gongxianosaurus †Lessemsaurus †Melanorosaurus †Sauropoda

The Anchisauria were a clade of sauropodomorph dinosaurs that lived during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. The name Anchisauria was first used by Galton and Upchurch in the second edition of The Dinosauria. Galton and Upchurch assigned two families of dinosaurs to the Anchisauria: the Anchisauridae and the Melanorosauridae. The more common prosauropods Plateosaurus and Massospondylus were placed in the sister clade Plateosauria.

However, recent research indicates that Anchisaurus is closer to sauropods than traditional prosauropods; thus, Anchisauria would also include Sauropoda.^[3]

The following cladogram simplified after an analysis presented by Blair McPhee and colleagues in 2014.^[4]

References

• Galton, P. M. & Upchurch, P. (2004). "Prosauropoda". In D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, & H. Osmólska (eds.), The Dinosauria (second edition). University of California Press, Berkeley 232-258.
• Yates, Adam M. (2007), "The first complete skull of the Triassic dinosaur Melanorosaurus Haughton (Sauropodomorpha: Anchisauria)", in Barrett, Paul M. & Batten, David J., Special Papers in Palaeontology, vol. 77, pp. 9–55, ISBN 978-1-4051-6933-2