To be specific, the Super Famicom system did not allow for us to display a large number of sprites (a technical method for displaying graphical objects on the screen) in a row. Yoshi is shaped the way he is in order to limit the number of sprites in a row when Mario is riding him. If you look at the diagrams for Yoshi, it’s easy to see that he was designed purely from a place of functionality. We made Yoshi a dinosaur not because we wanted Mario to ride a dinosaur, but because the space we had, in terms of functionality, was shaped much like a dinosaur.
