Old Earth Ministries Online Dinosaur Curriculum

Free online curriculum for homeschools and private schools

From Old Earth Ministries (We Believe in an Old Earth...and God!)

NOTE:  If you found this page through a search engine, please visit the intro page first. 

 

Lesson 7 - Herrerasaurus

Herrerasaurus (meaning "Herrera's lizard", after the name of the rancher who discovered the first fossil of the animal) was one of the earliest dinosaurs. All known specimens of this carnivore have been discovered in rocks of early Carnian age (late Triassic, around 228 million years ago) in northwestern Argentina. The type species, Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis, was described by Osvaldo Reig in 1963 and is the only species assigned to the genus. The names Ischisaurus and Frenguellisaurus are synonymous with Herrerasaurus.

Herrerasaurus

Quick Facts

 

Length:  10-20 feet

Weight:  463 - 772 lbs

Date Range:  228 - 225 Ma

Carnian Age, Triassic Period

 

Herrerasaurus

Mounted Herrerasaurus  skeleton cast, at the Field Museum in Chicago (Picture Source)

Description

Editor's Note:
For this first lesson on a specific dinosaur species, many links have been left in, so the student can familiarize themselves with terms that may be unfamiliar to them.

Herrerasaurus was a lightly-built bipedal carnivore with a long tail and a relatively small head. Its length is estimated at 3 to 6 meters (10 to 20 ft), and its hip height at more than 1.1 meters (3.3 ft). It may have weighed around 210–350 kilograms (463–772 lb). In a large specimen at first thought to belong to a separate genus, Frenguellisaurus, the skull measured 56 centimeters (1.8 ft) in length. Smaller specimens had skulls which measured around 30 centimeters (1 ft) in length.

Skull

Herrerasaurus had a long, narrow skull that lacked nearly all the specializations that
Herrerasaurus skull 
Skull cast, Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milan (Picture Source
 characterized later dinosaurs, and more closely resembled those of more primitive archosaurs such as Euparkeria. It had five pairs of fenestrae (skull openings) in its skull, two pairs of which were for the eyes and nostrils. Between the eyes and the nostrils were two antorbital fenestrae and a pair of tiny, 1-centimeter-long (0.4 in) slit-like holes called promaxillary fenestrae. Behind the eyes were large infratemporal fenestrae. These holes helped to reduce the weight of the skull.

Herrerasaurus had a flexible joint in the lower jaw, allowing it to slide back and forth to deliver a grasping bite. This cranial specialization is unusual among the dinosaurs but has evolved independently in some lizards. The rear of the lower jaw also had fenestrae. The jaws were equipped with large serrated teeth for biting and eating flesh, and the neck was slender and flexible.

Limbs

Herrerasaurus Skeleton

Skeleton cast shown alongside the smaller skeleton of Eoraptor and a Plateosaurus skull, North American Museum of Ancient Life (Picture Source)

The forelimbs of Herrerasaurus were less than half the length of its hind limbs. The upper arm and forearm were rather short, while the manus (hand) was elongated. The first two fingers and the thumb ended in curved, sharp claws for grasping prey. Its fourth and fifth digits were small stubs without claws.

Unlike most reptiles of its era, Herrerasaurus was fully bipedal. It had strong hind limbs with short thighs and rather long feet, indicating that it was most likely a swift runner. The foot had five toes, but only the middle three (digits II, III, and IV) bore weight. The outer toes (I and V) were small; the first toe had a small claw. The tail, partially stiffened by overlapping vertebral projections, balanced the body and was also an adaptation for speed.

Derived and basal characteristics

Herrerasaurus is something of an enigma in that it displays traits that are found in different groups of dinosaurs, and several traits found in non-dinosaurian archosaurs. Although it shared most of the characteristics of dinosaurs, there were a few differences, particularly in regard to the shape of its hip and leg bones. Its pelvis was similar to that of saurischian dinosaurs, but it had a bony acetabulum (where the femur meets the pelvis) that was only partially open. The ilium, the main hip bone, was supported only by two sacrals, a basal trait, but the pubis pointed backwards, a derived trait that parallels what is seen in dromaeosaurids and birds. Additionally, the end of the pubis had a booted shape, similar to what is present in avetheropods, and the vertebral centra had an Allosaurus-like hourglass shape.

Classification

Herrerasaurus gives its name to its family, Herrerasauridae, a group of similar animals from the Late Triassic. The most recent analysis (Nesbitt et al. 2009) found Herrerasaurus and its relatives in Herrerasauridae to be very basal theropods. The situation is further complicated by uncertainties in correlating the ages of late Triassic beds bearing land animals. Other members of the clade may include Eoraptor from the same Ischigualasto Formation of Argentina as Herrerasaurus, Staurikosaurus from the Santa Maria Formation of southern Brazil, Chindesaurus from the Upper Petrified Forest (Chinle Formation) of Arizona, and possibly Caseosaurus from the Dockum Formation of Texas, although the relationships of these animals are not fully understood, and not all paleontologists agree. Other possible basal theropods, Alwalkeria from the Late Triassic Maleri Formation of India, and Teyuwasu, known from very fragmentary remains from the Late Triassic of Brazil, might be related.

Discovery

Herrerasaurus was named by paleontologist Osvaldo Reig after Victorino Herrera, an
 Herrerasaurus
Artist Impression (Picture Source
 Andean goatherd who first noticed its fossils in outcrops near the city of San Juan in 1959. These rocks, which later yielded Eoraptor, are part of the Ischigualasto Formation and date from the late Ladinian to early Carnian stages of the Late Triassic period. Reig named a second dinosaur from these rocks in the same publication as Herrerasaurus; this dinosaur, Ischisaurus cattoi, is now considered a junior synonym and a juvenile of Herrerasaurus. Two other partial skeletons, with skull material, were named Frenguellisaurus ischigualastensis by Fernando Novas in 1986, but this species too is now thought to be a synonym.

A complete Herrerasaurus skull was not found until 1988, by a team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno.

 Paleoecology

Although Herrerasaurus shared the body shape of the large carnivorous dinosaurs, it lived about 230 million years ago, a time when dinosaurs were small and insignificant. It was the time of non-dinosaurian reptiles, not dinosaurs, and a major turning point in the Earth's ecology. The vertebrate fauna of the Ischigualasto Formation and the slightly later Los Colorados Formation consisted mainly of a variety of crurotarsal archosaurs and synapsids. For instance, in the Ischigualasto Formation, dinosaurs constituted only about 6% of the total number of fossils. By the end of the Triassic Period, dinosaurs were becoming the dominant large land animals, and the other archosaurs and synapsids declined in variety and number.

Studies suggest that the paleoenvironment of the Ischigualasto Formation was a volcanically active floodplain covered by forests and subject to strong seasonal rainfalls. The climate was moist and warm, though subject to seasonal variations. Vegetation consisted of ferns (Cladophlebis), horsetails, and giant conifers (Protojuniperoxylon). These plants formed highland forests along the banks of rivers. Herrerasaurus remains appear to have been the most common among the carnivores of the Ischigualasto Formation. It lived in the jungles of Late Triassic South America alongside another early dinosaur, the one metre long Eoraptor, as well as Saurosuchus, a giant land-living rauisuchian (a quadrupedal meat eater with a theropod-like skull); the broadly similar but smaller Venaticosuchus, an ornithosuchid; and the predatory chiniquodontids. Herbivores were much more abundant than carnivores and were represented by rhynchosaurs such as Hyperodapedon (a beaked reptile); aetosaurs (spiny armored reptiles); kannemeyeriid dicynodonts (stocky, front-heavy beaked quadrupedal animals) such as Ischigualastia; and traversodontids (somewhat similar in overall form to dicynodonts, but lacking beaks) such as Exaeretodon. These non-dinosaurian herbivores were much more abundant than early ornithischian dinosaurs like Pisanosaurus.

Paleobiology

The teeth of Herrerasaurus indicate that it was a carnivore; its size indicates it would have
Herrerasaurus 
An artist's impression; feeding on a small synapsid
 preyed upon small and medium-sized plant eaters. These might have included other dinosaurs, such as Pisanosaurus, as well as the more plentiful rhynchosaurs and synapsids. Herrerasaurus itself may have been preyed upon by giant rauisuchids like Saurosuchus; puncture wounds were found in one skull.

Coprolites (fossilized dung) containing small bones but no trace of plant fragments, discovered in the Ischigualasto Formation, have been assigned to Herrerasaurus based on fossil abundance. Mineralogical and chemical analysis of these coprolites indicates that this carnivore could digest bone.

End of Reading

Return to the Old Earth Ministries Online Dinosaur Curriculum homepage.

horizontal rule

Shopping

Bay State Replicas - Herrerasaurus Skull