The Massopoda is a clade

Clade

A clade is a group consisting of a species and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological...

 of sauropodomorph dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

s which lived during the Late Triassic

Late Triassic

The Late Triassic is in the geologic timescale the third and final of three epochs of the Triassic period. The corresponding series is known as the Upper Triassic. In the past it was sometimes called the Keuper, after a German lithostratigraphic group that has a roughly corresponding age...

 to the Late Cretaceous

Late Cretaceous

The Late Cretaceous is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous period is divided in the geologic timescale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous series...

 periods. Massopoda, which was first named by paleontologist

Paleontology

Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

 Adam M. Yates of the University of the Witwatersrand

University of the Witwatersrand

The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg is a South African university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University...

 in 2007

2007 in paleontology

-newly named:-New taxa:-Newly named non-avian dinosaurs:Data courtesy of George Olshevky's dinosaur genera list.-Newly named birds:-New papers:...

, is a stem-based taxon and it was defined by him as all animals more closely related to Saltasaurus loricatus than to Plateosaurus engelhardti.

Yates assigned the Massopoda to Plateosauria

Plateosauria

Plateosauria is a clade of sauropodomorph dinosaurs which lived during the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous. The name Plateosauria was first coined by Gustav Tornier in 1913. The name afterwards fell out of use until the 1980s, when a new generation of paleontologists began using the name...

. Within the clade, he assigned the families Massospondylidae

Massospondylidae

Massospondylidae is a family of massopod sauropodomorphs. Massospondylids are early sauropodomorph dinosaurs which existed in Asia, Africa and South America during the Late Triassic to the Early Jurassic periods...

 (which includes the relatively well-known dinosaur Massospondylus

Massospondylus

Massospondylus and ) is a genus of prosauropod dinosaur from the early Jurassic Period . It was described by Sir Richard Owen in 1854 from remains found in South Africa, and is thus one of the first dinosaurs to have been named...

) and Riojasauridae

Riojasauridae

Riojasauridae is a family of sauropod-like dinosaurs from the Upper Triassic. It is known primarily from the genera Riojasaurus and Eucnemesaurus...

 (which includes Riojasaurus

Riojasaurus

Riojasaurus was a herbivorous prosauropod dinosaur named after La Rioja Province in Argentina where it was found by José Bonaparte. It lived during the Late Triassic and grew to about long. Riojasaurus is the only known riojasaurid to live in South America.-Description:Riojasaurus had a heavy...

) as well as the core group Sauropoda

Sauropoda

Sauropoda , or the sauropods , are an infraorder of saurischian dinosaurs. They had long necks, long tails, small heads , and thick, pillar-like legs. They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land...

.

The following cladogram

Cladogram

A cladogram is a diagram used in cladistics which shows ancestral relations between organisms, to represent the evolutionary tree of life. Although traditionally such cladograms were generated largely on the basis of morphological characters, DNA and RNA sequencing data and computational...

 simplified after an analysis presented by Apaldetti and colleagues in 2011.