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Plateosaurus trossingensis

The name Plateosaurus is shrouded in mystery because the original author didn't provide a meaning for what he had in mind. It has been variously decribed as stemming from the Greek "Plata" (flat), "Platy" (paddle), and "plateia" (broadway), with some sources going so far as suggesting they all allude to its broad teeth... which were unknown at the time it was named! Plateosaurus is probably derived from the Greek "platos" (breadth, width, bulk) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard), based on the size of its original remains.
The species epithet, trossingensis, means "from Trossingen" in Latin. The initial epithet, engelhardti, was named to honor discoverer Johann Friedrich Engelhardt (see discovery). ZooBank registry: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:BBCFE37D-5681-45D5-BF27-5342C6DE916E. Dimodosaurus (Pidancet and Chopard, 1862)
Gresslyosaurus? (Rütimeyer, 1856)
Pachysaurops (von Huene, 1961)
Pachysaurus (von Huene, 1907/1908)
Pachysauriscus (Kuhn, 1959)
Sellosaurus? (von Huene, 1907/1908)
Platysaurus (Agassiz, 1846) The first fossils of Plateosaurus were discovered in a Trossingen Formation clay pit about 2 km South of Heroldsberg, Feuerletten, NE Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, by chemistry teacher Dr. Johann Friedrich Philipp Engelhardt in the summer of 1834. Although not assigned as holotype, a set of hip vertebrae (UEN 552) that von Meyer referred to explicitly when discussing the distinctiveness of Plateosaurus in his initial description were nominated as neotype by Markus Moser in 2003.
Since then, Galton petitioned the ICZN to install an almost complete skull and skeleton (SMNS 13200), which has a tumultuous history itself, as replacement neotype because he considers all Plateosaurus engelhardti remains to be either non-diagnostic or "unidentifiable". Although long thought of as the unofficial Plateosaurus holotype, that specimen belongs to an altogether different species — Plateosaurus trossingensis (Fraas, 1913) — which was itself considered a nomen nudum by von Huene. On top of that, he changed its epithet to fraasianus for its official description in 1932 due to concerns over a possible confusion with Teratosaurus trossingensis, which was unnecessary.
Given that a holotype of one valid species cannot act as neotype of another, Galton pushed to have SMNS 13200 installed as the new Plateosaurus name-bearer entirely. Some paleontologists were far from impressed by that proposed course of action, but, nevertheless, Galton was granted his wish in 2019. In 2025, Dupuis et al. described NMZ 1000001, a nearly complete Plateosaurus trossingensis skeleton found in the Klettgau Formation at Gruhalde Quarry in Frick, Switzerland, in 2018, that was nicknamed "Frosch" ("frog") due to the frog-kick posture in which the belly-down skeleton was found. The specimen showed evidence of pathology (injury or disease), in this case, severe osteomyelitis: a bone infection affecting its right shoulder blade and upper arm, with the tell-tale signs being roughened surface textures, possible fusion of nearby bones, and significant changes inside the bone structure of the infected areas. The severity of its infection indicates that it likely lived with the condition for an extended period before it finally croaked at the grand old age of twenty-five. An estimated body length of 7.8 meters makes it one of the largest known Plateosaurus specimens from Frick. Ursina Bachmann of the Sauriermuseum Frick, Schulstrasse, Switzerland and Ben Pabst of the Sauriermuseum Aathal, Zürichstrasse, Switzerland. ("Frosch")