Plateosaurus

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

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.

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.