With all the hubbub over the new Homo erectus/Homo habilis paper in Nature, it might be easy to miss another important bit of paleo-news; in Frick, Switzerland, near the German border, two more specimens of Plateosaurus have come out of the ground near other sites known for Plateosaurus discoveries. This expands the area in which these dinosaurs could be found, and there are likely many more in the area.
I remember reading suggestions here and there that Plateosaurus lived in large groups or herds, or might even be migrating. The extensions of the already-known sites, if studied carefully, could definitely give us some more clues as to the paleobiology of Plateosaurus. For those unfamiliar with Plateosaurus, it was a large Triassic prosauropod dinosaur, a group of dinosaurs once considered to be ancestral to the great sauropods (like Apatosaurus) of the Jurassic, although many scientists now consider them to be a sister group of sauropods. Regardless of whether the prosauropods were ancestral to sauropods or not, they are closely related, and can give us some idea as to what the ancestors of both groups looked like. One of the most basal known sauropod dinosaurs, Anchisaurus, used to be classified as a prosauropod, although it exhibits a more “primitive” form overall than Plateosaurusdoes in that in lacks many of the specializations to an entirely herbivorous diet.
All of this, of course, reminds me that I have a lot of learning to do when it comes to sauropods and their ancestry, and I fully expect Julia or someone else to come along and set me straight, hah.