Welcome to Agnosphitys
Name Definition
Unknown begetter
Name Given By
Fraser, Padian, Walkden & Davis in 2002
Location
Avon Fissure Fill in England, Europe
Classification
Ornithodira, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Silesauridae
Size
around 2.3 ft long (0.7 meters), around 6.6 lbs (around 3 kg)
Temporal Range
Norian stage of the late Triassic, ~208 million years ago
Ecological niche
possibly a small omnivore or maybe a herbivore
Species/Sub Species
A. cromhallensis
Diet
the dentition is unknown, but based on the diet of most late silesaurids, it was most likely an omnivore or a herbivore
Introduction
Agnosphitys is a genus of silesaurid dinosauriforms that lived in England during the late Triassic. Agnosphitys is probably one of the most confusing animals that scientists have ever had to classify, with it being placed outside of the Dinosauria clade at the time of description. It has also been placed in the Guaibasauridae family consisting of basal saurischian dinosaurs, however it was later reallocated to the Silesauridae, the dinosauriforms that are most closely related to the true dinosaurs. As you can see already, Agnosphitys has had a very confusing taxonomic history and it is still stumping scientists. There have even been suggestions that the original holotype was a chimera, which means that the remains came from multiple different animals, which would deem Agnosphitys an invalid genus. Additionally, the remains of Agnosphitys may be the entire reason of all this confusion, as they aren’t much to go on either and show traits from multiple different groups of theropods and even maybe some other undiscovered archosaurs. All in all, Agnosphitys is an absolute nightmare to classify. In the Avon Fissure Fill where it was discovered, there are also some other creatures present in the fissure fill including mostly prosauropods and basal sauropodomorphs, though there is the phytosaur Rileyasuchus, an indeterminate theropod genus, and the archosaur Palaeosaurus. If it is a chimera, maybe some of these archosaurs and dinosaurs had their fossils mixed together to make the type specimen of Agnosphitys.