Ingentia

Phylogeny: Dinosauria > Saurischia > Sauropodomorpha > Plateosauria > Massopoda > Sauropodiformes > Sauropoda (?) > Lessemsauridae

Overview: Sauropodomorphs first appear in the fossil record in the Late Triassic, with most of the earliest members of the group being small, lightly built, bipedal and probably omnivorous (evolving from carnivorous dinosaur ancestors). However, prior to the end of the period, they would begin to diversify quite a bit. We can see this with the genus Ingentia. Unlike its earlier relatives, it was a quadrupedal, herbivorous and decently large animal. Its size didn’t quite reach that of some later sauropodomorphs from the Jurassic, but during its time, Ingentia and its closest relatives were some of the largest land animals the world had yet seen up until that point. Fully grown adults were likely safe from all but the largest of predators, which in that time, usually weren’t theropod dinosaurs. Theropods were still mostly smaller and lightly-built animals, while terrestrial crocodile relatives, namely the “rauisuchids”, dominated that top predator role in most regions. Ingentia itself would’ve subsisted on plants like conifers and cycads.

In order to support its great bulk, Ingentia had to have strong limbs, which fossil evidence suggests it certainly had. These limbs, however, weren’t the highly specialized, pillar-like limbs seen on some of its more derived relatives. For the most part, they retained some of their more “primitive” shape, but in a slightly altered form, still well suited for bearing its body weight. Evolving columnar legs would allow later sauropodomorphs to reach such stupendous sizes. Such dinosaurs belonged to the Sauropoda, which some studies suggest Ingentia also may’ve belonged to, representing one of the earliest examples of a true sauropod. It belonged to the family Lessemsauridae, alongside other dinosaurs like Lessemsaurus, Antetonitrus and Ledumahadi. Other studies, however, have placed the Lessemsauridae just outside the Sauropoda, as a sister clade – related, but not truly belonging to it. Described in 2018, the full scientific name of this dinosaur, Ingentia prima, means “first huge one”, referring to its size at a time when that was still rare for dinosaurs.