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Anchisaurus was a small, lightly built animal, about 8ft (2.5m) long. It had blunt, diamond shaped teeth spaced out along the jaw.

Perhaps the first dinosaur to be discovered in North America, Anchisaurus was rather longer than a human's height. It was among the smallest and most primitive of all prosauropods - plant- eating cousins of the mighty sauropods. The head was slight in comparison with the lengthy neck, back, and tall, and the capacious belly. 'Near lizard' often bore its weight on all fours, although its legs were far longer and more powerful than its arms. Like the bipedal Thecodontosaurus,it had slender, four-toed feet and five-fingered hands that were mysteriously armed with sickle-shaped thumb-daws.

HEAD AND NECK Anchisaurus's head was surprisingly small for the size of its body. The head was long and narrow, and the skull relatively flat, with a lower crown than that of Plateosaurus and most other prosauropods. In addition, the slope of the forehead was more gradual. The model shown here is based on the assumption that Anchisaurus had no cheeks. This might be consistent with a mode of feeding based mainly on snatching and gulping, but anatomical evidence suggests prosauropods had cheeks.

The first bones were collected in Connecticut in 1818, some time later, similar dinosaurs were found in South America. At first these were called Hortalorarsus, but a recent study shown that they belong to a species called Anchisaurus.

Location: USA Connecticut, Massachusetts

Diet: Foliage

Size: Length- 2.4m (8 ft)

      Weight- 27kg (60 lb.)

Classification:

Family- Anchisauride

Infraorder- Prosauropoda

Suborder- Sauropodomorpha

Order- Saurischia

Time: 194 million years ago

 

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