proportions in Vulcanodon evolved independently from those of true sauropods (through convergent evolution). He argued that primitive features of the pelvis as well as the knife-shaped teeth preclude a classification within the Sauropoda. The teeth, however, are now known to belong to a theropod. Arthur Cruickshank (1975) was the first to show that Vulcanodon was indeed a sauropod, arguing that the fifth metatarsal bone was equally long as the remaining metatarsals, a condition seen in other sauropods but not in prosauropods. Today, Vulcanodon is universally accepted to be one of the most basal (primitive) members of Sauropoda. Michael Cooper (1984) erected a new family, the Vulcanodontidae, which he regarded as the "rootstock" for later sauropod families. Originally, the Vulcanodontidae included Vulcanodon and the Indian Barapasaurus, but subsequent studies attributed a number of other, much more fragmentary early sauropod genera to this family, including Ohmdenosaurus and Zizhongosaurus. Paul Upchurch (1995) showed that Barapasaurus was more closely related to later, more advanced sauropods than to Vulcanodon, rendering the Vulcanodontidae polyphyletic and therefore invalid. The exact relationships with other basal sauropod genera remain unclear. Ronan Allain and colleagues (2004, 2008) found that Vulcanodon is most closely related to Tazoudasaurus, a newly discovered sauropod genus from Morocco. These researchers suggested reintroducing the name Vulcanodontidae to name the clade containing Vulcanodon and Tazoudasaurus. However, this sibling relationship between Tazoudasaurus and Vulcanodon could not be confirmed by other analyses. Adam Yates (2004) described a single sauropod tail vertebra from the Upper Elliot Formation of South Africa that may belong to a genus closely related to Vulcanodon. The Upper Elliot Formation is famous for its abundant fossils of the prosauropod Massospondylus. Paleoecology During the later part of the Lower Jurassic, southern Africa was the scene of massive volcanism, resulting in extensive lava flows (so called flood basalts) that covered much of southern Africa and Antarctica. These basalt formations are known as the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous province. Vulcanodon comes from the "Vulcanodon beds", a fossil-bearing sediment unit within the Batoka Formation, which is composed primarily of flood basalts. The skeleton was found near the top of a bedded layer of sand- and siltstone that is over- and underlain by flood basalts. It was long assumed that Vulcanodon lived during the lowermost (earliest) part of the Jurassic (the Hettangian stage) or at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary, approximately 200 million years ago. Therefore, it was regarded as the earliest sauropod known,