Plateosaurus

Plateosaurus is a prosauropod dinosaur genus. They lived during the Upper Triassic period, around 214 to 294 million years ago in what is now Europe.^[1]

Plateosaurus Temporal range: Upper Triassic 214–204 mya
Mounted skeleton of Plateosaurus, Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Germany
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Class:	Sauropsida
Superorder:	Dinosauria
Order:	Saurischia
Suborder:	Sauropodomorpha
Infraorder:	Prosauropoda
Family:	Plateosauridae
Genus:	Plateosaurus Meyer, 1837

They were very common in their day. Over 100 skeletons have been found, some of them nearly complete. Many fossils have come from Swabia, Germany.

Plateosaurus was the first long-necked plant eater in the Triassic. An adult Plateosaurus could weigh up to 1,500 pounds (680 kg) and grow 27 feet (8.2 m) long. They had plump plant-crushing teeth, powerful hind limbs, short but muscular arms and grasping hands with large claws on three fingers. They probably used their sharp thumb claws to defend themselves against predators.^[2]

The explanation of the large number of skeletons is that the areas were probably mud-traps.^[3]