Evolution of the sauropod body plan, with special emphasis on limbs and girdles

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Sauropod dinosaurs are by far the largest land living animals that ever lived on Earth. It is still largely unknown why only these animals attained such gigantic proportions and what enabled them to do so. To understand the origin and evolution of gigantism in sauropods, a detailed knowledge of the interrelationships of their closets relatives and basal forms is essential. Within the framework of an analysis of the interrelationships of basal saurischian dinosaurs, the evolution of key complexes of their anatomy can also be investigated. The limbs and limb girdles that had to support the mass of gigantic sauropods are one of these key complexes. Thus, in the present project, the phylogenetic relationships of basal saurischians, including "prosauropods", basal theropods, and basal sauropods, will be analysed and osteological data from a wide variety of saurischian taxa will be used in combination with myological and osteological data from Recent relatices to reconstruct the evolutionary history of sauropod limbs. In combination with data from other projects within this research group, the result will then be interpreted to identify possible "key adaptations", preadaptations, and correlations between evolutionary changes and body size to improve our understanding of the origin of sauropod gigantism.