Diplodocoidea is a superfamily of sauropoddinosaurs, which included some of the longest animals of all time, including slender giants like Supersaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, and Amphicoelias. Most had very long necks and long, whip-like tails; however, one family (the dicraeosaurids) are the only known sauropods to have re-evolved a short neck, presumably an adaptation for feeding low to the ground. This adaptation was taken to the extreme in the highly specialized sauropod Brachytrachelopan. A study of snout shape and dental microwear in diplodocoids showed that the square snouts, large proportion of pits, and fine subparallel scratches in Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Nigersaurus, and Rebbachisaurus suggest ground-height nonselective browsing; the narrow snouts of Dicraeosaurus, Suuwassea, and Tornieria and the coarse scratches and gouges on the teeth of Dicraeosaurus suggest mid-height selective browsing in those taxa.[2] This taxon is also noteworthy because diplodocoid sauropods had the highest tooth replacement rates of any vertebrates, as exemplified by Nigersaurus, which had new teeth erupting every 30 days.[3]
Taxonomy
The below taxonomy follows the study of Emanuel Tschopp, Octavio Mateus and Roger Benson, 2015:[4]
- Diplodocoidea
- Haplocanthosaurus
- Diplodocimorpha
- Rebbachisauridae
- Flagellicaudata
- Dicraeosauridae
- Diplodocidae
- Amphicoelias
- Apatosaurinae
- Diplodocinae
The phylogenetics of Diplodocoidea were reviewed in 2015 with a specimen-level phylogenetic analysis, as well as a species-level analysis. Their cladistic analysis is shown below.[4]
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article
Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the
Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the
Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.