plateosaurus

plateosaurus (plural plateosauruses or plateosauri)

1. Any herbivorous dinosaur of the family Plateosauridae.
   • 1958, Gustav Fochler-Hauke, translated by W. H. Johnston, Our World and Its Beginnings, London: Odhams Press Limited, facing page 113:

     Triassic Period: cynognathus (foreground; South Africa), podekosaurus (left; Northern America) and plateosauri (background; Western Europe)

     Two plateosauri are depicted.

   • 1985, Rudolf Daber, Jochen Helms, translated by C.S.V. Salt, Fossils: The Oldest Treasures That Ever Lived, Neptune City, N.J.: T.F.H. Publications, Inc., Ltd., →ISBN, page 161, column 3:

     What we know of the history of the dinosaurs begins in the Triassic. The first skeletal remains were found in deposits of the uppermost Middle Triassic but trackways of dinosaurs have been discovered in strata five to six million years older. The largest dinosaurs of that time were the plateosauri which attained more than six metres in length.

   • 2015, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hausfrau: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →ISBN, page 87:

     A month before, a mass grave of dinosaur bones was unearthed in Frick. An amateur paleontologist found them. He discovered over one hundred entirely intact skeletons. Fossils of plateosauri two hundred million years old.