We say that during Christmas today the whole world shuts down – the same thing happened during the Saturnalia. Chariot racing was also an important component of the Saturnalia and the associated sun-god festivities around that time – by the late fourth century AD there might be up to 36 races a day. The author Aulus Gellius noted that, as a student, he and his friends would play trivia games. People were permitted to gamble in public and bob for corks in ice water.

What did the Romans eat? The surprising foods eaten in ancient Rome.

On the feast day, these binds of wool wrapped around his feet were loosened – symbolising that the Romans were ‘cutting loose’ during the Saturnalia. The statue of Saturn in the temple itself spent most of the year with its feet bound in woolen strips. Macrobius confirms this, and says that the rowdy participants would spill out onto the street, with the participants shouting, “ Io Saturnalia!” the way we might greet people with ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy New Year!’Ī small statue of Saturn might be present at such feasts, as if Saturn himself were there. People would feast in their homes, but the historian Livy notes that by 217 BC there would also be a huge public feast at the oldest temple in Rome, the Temple of Saturn. However, all more recent cladistic analyses found it to be a very basal sauropodomorph, possibly guaibasaurid, as the family was found to nest in a basal position within Sauropodomorpha.People would also wear a cap of freedom – the pilleum – which was usually worn by slaves who had been awarded their freedom, to symbolise that they were ‘free’ during the Saturnalia.

Overall, Bonaparte found that both Saturnalia and Guaibasaurus were more theropod-like than prosauropod-like. Like Langer, Bonaparte found that these forms may have been primitive sauropodomorphs, or an assemblage of forms close to the common ancestor of the sauropodomorphs and theropods. Bonaparte placed the two in the same family, Guaibasauridae. José Bonaparte and colleagues, in a 2007 study, found Saturnalia to be very similar to the primitive saurischian Guaibasaurus. However, in a 2003 paper, Langer noted that features of its skull and hand were more similar to the sister group of sauropodomorphs, the theropods, and that Saturnalia could at best be considered a member of the sauropodomorph 'stem-lineage', rather than a true member of that group. Paleontologist Max Cardoso Langer and colleagues, in their 1999 description of the genus, assigned it to the Sauropodomorpha. The primitive nature of Saturnalia, combined with its mixture of sauropodomorph and theropod characteristics, has made it difficult to classify. It probably grew to about 1.5 meters (5 ft) long. It is one of the oldest true dinosaurs yet found. A partial femur from the Carnian Pebbly Arkose Formation of Zimbabwe was also attributed to the genus. All specimen were collected in the 'Wald-Sanga' (also known as 'Sanga do Mato') locality from the Alemoa Member of the Santa Maria Formation (Rosário do Sul Group), dating to the Carnian faunal stage of the early Late Triassic, about 225 million years ago. The two paratypes are MCP 3845-PV, partial skeleton including natural cast of partial mandible with teeth and some postcranial remains, and MCP 3846-PV, partial skeleton including postcranial remains.

The holotype, MCP 3844-PV, a well-preserved semi-articulated postcranial skeleton, was discovered in mid-summer at Sanga da Alemoa, Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, in the geopark of Paleorrota. Saturnalia was originally named on the basis of three partial skeletons. Saturnalia is an extinct genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur known from the Triassic of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil about 225 MYA.

Saturnalia history