Tyrannosauropus

Tyrannosauropus is a dubious ichnogenus of tridactyl dinosaur footprint from the Campanian of the Late Cretaceous of North America. Tyrannosauropus was named for a collection of footprints discovered on the ceiling of a cave in Utah which were suggested to have been made by Tyrannosaurus and informally labelled as "Tyrannosauripus" in 1924 (not to be confused with the separate, later ichnogenus Tyrannosauripus).[1] These footprints would later be named by Haubold in 1971 as Tyrannosauropus petersoni, and attributed to Tyrannosaurus rex.[2] However, Tyrannosauropus are Campanian in age, pre-dating the Maastrichtian age for Tyrannosaurus, and the morphology of the footprints more closely resembles those of hadrosaurid dinosaurs than those of theropods. Furthermore, in 1994 another footprint was described as likely belonging to Tyrannosaurus that matched it in both age and morphology and was named Tyrannosauripus. In the same publication, the description of Tyrannosauropus was deemed inadequate, with the holotype damaged and lost, and the ichnotaxon was declared undiagnostic and thus a nomen dubium.[3]

For the footprints attributed to Tyrannosaurus, see Tyrannosauripus.

Tyrannosauropus
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, Campanian
Trace fossil classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Order: †Ornithischia
Suborder: †Ornithopoda
Family: †Hadrosauridae
Ichnogenus: †Tyrannosauropus
Haubold, 1971
Type ichnospecies
Tyrannosauropus petersoni
Haubold, 1971

In 1984, large tridactyl footprints discovered at the Lark Quarry trackway from the Winton Formation, Australia, were interpreted as most similar to Tyrannosauropus and were attributed to a large theropod trackmaker as cf. Tyrannosauropus. However, due to the likely hadrosaurid affinity of Tyrannosauropus, the identity of the cf. Tyrannosauropus track maker has been re-interpreted as a probable ornithopod, and suggested to belong to the ichnogenus Amblydactylus instead, itself likely made by the genus Muttaburrasaurus.[4]

See also

References
  1. Peterson, W. (1924). Dinosaur tracks in the roofs of coal mines. Natural History, 24:388-391.
  2. Haubold, H. (1971). Ichnia Amphiborum et Reptiliorum Fossilium. Handbuch der Palaeoherpetologie Teil 18. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart. 124 pp.
  3. Lockley, M. G.; Hunt, A. P. (1994). A track of the giant theropod dinosaur Tyrannosaurus from close to the Cretaceous/Tertiary Boundary, northern New Mexico. Ichnos, 3(3): 213-218.
  4. Romilio, Anthony; Salisbury, Steven W. (2011-04-01). "A reassessment of large theropod dinosaur tracks from the mid-Cretaceous (late Albian–Cenomanian) Winton Formation of Lark Quarry, central-western Queensland, Australia: A case for mistaken identity". Cretaceous Research. 32 (2): 135–142. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2010.11.003. ISSN 0195-6671.


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