Ornithotarsus (lit. 'bird ankle') is a genus of hadrosaurid ornithopod dinosaurs that lived in North America during the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now the Merchantville Formation about 84 million to 78 million years ago.
| Ornithotarsus Temporal range: Late Cretaceous,
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| Holotype of Ornithotarsus immanis | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | †Ornithischia |
| Clade: | †Neornithischia |
| Clade: | †Ornithopoda |
| Family: | †Hadrosauridae |
| Genus: | †Ornithotarsus Cope, 1869 |
| Species: | †O. immanis
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| Binomial name | |
| †Ornithotarsus immanis Cope, 1869
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Taxonomy
editOrnithotarsus immanis was described in 1869 on the basis of YPM 3221, a fragmentary hindlimb comprising a distal tibia and fibula as well as ankle bones unearthed from the Merchantville Formation of Raritan Bay of New Jersey.[1] Although subsequently treated as a synonym of Hadrosaurus, Prieto-Marquez et al. (2006) found Ornithotarsus to share no diagnostic traits with the H. foulkii holotype and declared it a nomen dubium undetermined beyond Hadrosauridae, and Brownstein (2021) agreed with this assessment.[2][3]
References
edit- ^ Cope, ED. 1869. Synopsis of the extinct Batrachia, Reptilia and Aves of North America. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. Philadelphia 14, 105–252.
- ^ Prieto−Márquez, A., Weishampel D.B., and Horner J.R. 2006. The dinosaur Hadrosaurus foulkii, from the Campanian of the East Coast of North America, with a reevaluation of the genus. ‘’Acts Palaeontologica Polonica 51 (1): 77–98.
- ^ Brownstein, C., 2021. Dinosaurs from the Santonian–Campanian Atlantic coastline substantiate phylogenetic signatures of vicariance in Cretaceous North America. Royal Society Open Science 8 (8): 210127 doi:10.1098/rsos.210127 ISSN 2054-5703.
