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Massospondylus
Massospondylus (pronounced 'Mass-o-spon-dye-luss') was one of the earliest dinosaurs, which means it was one of the first dinosaurs in the world. It lived during the Triassic ('Try-ass-ik') period about 220 million years ago.
WHEN WAS MASSOSPONDYLUS DISCOVERED? The first fossils of Massospondylus were found in South Africa in 1854. At that time there were no museums or universities in the country, so there was nowhere to keep the fossils and nobody to study them. The bones were therefore sent to the British Museum in London, England, where they were studied by a scientist called Sir Richard Owen. He is very famous indeed, because he is the man who created the name “dinosaur” from the two ancient Greek words deinos (meaning “fearfully awful”, which has been translated in modern times into “terrible”) and saura or sauros (meaning “lizard”).
DID SIR RICHARD OWEN GIVE MASSOSPONDYLUS ITS NAME, TOO? Yes, he did. Again he turned to the ancient languages of Greek and Latin, and used them to describe the bones he had been sent. Those fossils included some of the backbones or vertebrae ('vur-tub-ray') of the animal, which were much bigger than anything Sir Richard had seen before. So he used the Latin massa (meaning “a lump or heap”) - from which our modern word 'massive' also comes - and the Greek spondulion (meaning “a vertebra”), and created the name Massospondylus, meaning “Bulky Backbone” or “Lumpy Backbone”.
DID SIR RICHARD OWEN KNOW THAT MASSOSPONDYLUS WAS ONE OF THE FIRST DINOSAURS? No, he didn't. He was working right at the beginning of the science, and very few dinosaur fossils had been found and studied. It was only very much later, well into the 20th century, that it was recognised as one of the earliest prosauropod ('pro-saw-ro-pod) dinosaurs.
WHAT'S A PROSAUROPOD? The name means “Forward of (or Before) the Lizard-Foot”, and describes the fact that these early four-legged long-necked dinosaurs came before the great land giants that everyone knows and recognises. One of the big differences between the first quadruped ('kwod-roo-ped') - four-legged - dinosaurs and the later ones was their feet. The sauropods had feet like those of modern elephants; the prosauropods had feet with separate toes. Another difference was their size: the prosauropods were smaller than the later gigantic sauropods. The reason prosauropods are so important scientifically is not just that they were among the first of the dinosaurs. It is because they were the first group of dinosaurs ever to live off nothing but plants, and to spread out and take over new territories - a movement called an “evolutionary radiation”. And, of course, they are important because they were - quite literally - the trailblazers for their gigantic relatives-to-be.
SO WHAT DID MASSOSPONDYLUS LOOK LIKE? It was quite big, even if it wasn't a giant. An adult standing on all fours could be up to about 6 m (about 20 feet) long and more than a metre (3.3 feet) high at the shoulder. It would have weighed anything from 200 to 500 kg (91-230 lb). It had a typically prosauropod long tail that was very fat at the base (where it met the body) and very thin and whip-like at the end. It had a long neck with a surprisingly small head, and strong back legs that were longer than its front legs (so it tipped a bit forwards). Its back feet had four toes with large, strong bones, and the beginnings of a fifth toe, which makes scientists think it probably walked a bit like dogs and cats do today. The front feet had five toes - just like us - all with claws. The first toe on each front foot was particularly large and had a very strong claw; in other words it looked, and probably worked, like a thumb.
HOW COULD MASSOSPONDYLUS MANAGE WITH SUCH A SMALL HEAD? Very well indeed. Its head was big enough to contain two huge eyes and two very big nostrils, and its jaws might have been small but they were packed tightly with large numbers of peg-like teeth. Those teeth are very interesting, because under magnification they have ridged edges that look like the edges of simple leaves. They are, in fact, called “leaf-teeth”, and they usually point to a plant-eating animal. Massospondylus's head also had strong bones that supported the tongue, which must have been both large and mobile - much like a giraffe's. There was once a suggestion from some scientists that Massospondylus had a beak, because of the unusual fact that its upper jaw projects over the lower. The rest of the jaw's anatomy, however, simply did not support this idea and it has since been dropped.
WHY DID IT HAVE SUCH BIG EYES AND NOSTRILS? With questions like that, we're into the 'observation and deduction' side of science. We look around at creatures today with similar features, and see how - or if - those features influence the animals' behaviour. So think about things with really big eyes, and think about why an animal would need larger eyes than normal. Add into that equation why it might need big nostrils, and what have you got? You have a nocturnal animal: a creature that feeds at night, and that requires both good eyesight and a keen sense of smell to detect not only food but also potential predators. So was Massospondylus nocturnal, roaming the Triassic nights in search of sustenance? Probably.
HOW DID MASSOSPONDYLUS MOVE AROUND? That's a good question. About 100 years ago, scientists thought prosauropods were bipedal (in other words, they walked on their two back legs) and used their hands for grasping. Modern thinking is that they were probably quadrupedal ('kwod-roo-peddle') - four-footed - and only rose up on their hind legs to feed or to fight, since in that position they could use their hands to tear up plants, reach for tree branches and hold them, or swipe at an enemy (remember those claws?). One of the main reasons for this change in attitude among scientists is that they discovered an interesting thing about the front feet of prosauropods: their toes could not only flex (to grasp things) but could also hyper-extend (bend outwards), so they could rest on the ground and bend as the animals walked.
WHAT DID MASSOSPONDYLUS EAT? Scientists have argued a great deal about this through the years. Some have said prosauropods were scavenger-predators; others thought they were omnivores, eating both plants and animals. Today, most scientists believe they were totally herbivorous (plant-eating). Most of these arguments centred on the teeth, which look as though they could tear flesh as easily as leaves. There was also the problem of how, if they ate plants, they could get the goodness they needed out of them since they could not chew and so could not break the tough plant cell walls (which are also resistant to digestive acids) to get at the juicy insides. Then it was discovered (in 1985) that prosauropods used to swallow stones, which lodged in the muscular walls of a gizzard or part of the stomach and pulped the plant material so it could be digested. Problem solved. By the way, the same trick of stomach-stones (properly called “gastroliths”) in a 'gastric mill' is still used today - by birds. Massospondylus certainly had a gastric mill. We know, because stomach-stones have been found inside fossil skeletons. Incidentally, those stones have also let us into another secret: that Massospondylus used to walk a long way for its food. One skeleton was found with gastroliths from more than 20 km away. So that is why scientists now believe Massospondylus was herbivorous - and that it was among the first truly “high browsers”, stretching their necks up to reach tasty titbits in treetops that nothing had been able to get to before.
HOW DID MASSOSPONDYLUS SPEND ITS TIME? The truth is, we don't really know; but we can work out quite a bit from where and how fossils have been found, as well as from the fossils themselves. First of all, fossil concentrations have suggested that Massospondylus was a herd animal, perhaps wandering through the ancient landscape of what is today South Africa - as well as the rest of Africa - like modern wildebeest. It was certainly widespread. Remains of Massospondylus have also been found in North and South America, China and India. When Massospondylus was alive, today's land masses were all joined together in the super-continent Pangaea ('Pan-jee-a', which is Greek for “All Earth”). This distribution of fossils indicates that the animals were present in large numbers over very large areas. We also know that Massospondylus laid eggs - small eggs, too, for the size of the animal. They were longish and tapering, about 10 cm around their widest part and not too much larger than modern chicken eggs. The young hatchlings must therefore have been very small indeed, and probably needed mothering - along the lines of food being brought to the nest - for some time. Bone studies tell us that it took 15 to 18 years for a Massospondylus to grow to full size - interestingly enough, roughly about the same time it takes us to do the same thing.
WHEN DID MASSOSPONDYLUS DIE OUT? It died out around 194 million years ago in the early Jurassic period, along with the rest of the prosauropods (seven different families of small to large bipedal and quadrupedal dinosaurs). The suggestion from science is that their larger sauropod relatives, who had arrived on the scene by then, were more efficient at high-level browsing - and ate more because they were so much bigger - so the prosauropods simply succumbed to food shortage.
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