Saturnalia tupiniquim

Saturnalia is an extinct genus of basal prosauropod dinosaur from the Triassic of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil.^[1] The deposits are dated to the early Upper Triassic, about 225 million years ago (mya). The dinosaur grew to about 1.5 meters (5 ft) long.^[1]

Saturnalia tupiniquim Temporal range: Upper Triassic, 233 mya
Life restoration
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Clade:	Saurischia
Clade:	†Sauropodomorpha
Subfamily:	†Saturnaliinae
Genus:	†Saturnalia
Species:	†S. tupiniquim
Binomial name
Saturnalia tupiniquim Langer et al., 1999

Phylogeny

Saturnalia is primitive, and its mixture of characteristics,^[2] has made it difficult to classify. It is one of the oldest true dinosaurs yet found.

The first (1999) description of the genus assigned it to the Sauropodomorpha.^[1] However, in a 2003 paper, Langer noted that features of its skull and hand were more similar to the sister group of sauropodomorphs, the theropods. Also that Saturnalia could be a member of the sauropodomorph "stem-lineage", rather than a true member of that group.^[3]

José Bonaparte and colleagues, in a 2007 study, found Saturnalia to be very similar to the primitive saurischian Guaibasaurus. Bonaparte placed the two in the same family, Guaibasauridae. Like Langer, Bonaparte found that these forms may have been primitive sauropodomorphs, or an assemblage of forms close to the common ancestor of the sauropodomorphs and theropods. Overall, Bonaparte found that both Saturnalia and Guaibasaurus were more theropod-like than prosauropod-like.^[4]

However, all more recent cladistic analyses found it to be a very basal sauropodomorph,^{[5][6][7][8][9]}