Apatodon Temporal range:
Late Jurassic,
| |
---|---|
Scientific classification
![]() | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Clade: | Dinosauria |
Genus: | †
Apatodon Marsh, 1877 |
Species: | †A. mirus
|
Binomial name | |
†Apatodon mirus Marsh, 1877
|
Apatodon is a dubious genus of dinosaur that may have been a theropod. [1] The type, and only species, A. mirus, was named in 1877 by Othniel Charles Marsh. [2] It was found in the Late Jurassic-aged Morrison Formation of Colorado. [3]
When Marsh named Apatodon in 1877, he thought it was a jaw with a tooth from a Mesozoic pig, but it was soon shown that the specimen was an eroded vertebra, from a dinosaur possibly from the Morrison Formation of Garden Park, Colorado. [2] Baur (1890) correctly identified that Marsh (1877) had misidentified the neural spine as the tooth of a pig-like animal. [4]
Apatodon was assigned to Iguanodontoidea by Hay in 1902, [5] to Ornithischia by von Huene in 1909, [6] to Stegosauridae by von Zittel in 1911, [7] and to Titanosaurinae by Steel in 1970, [8] and also Casanovas et al. in 1987. [9] ( Kuhn in 1939 also listed Apatodon as a sauropod). [10]
The only recovered specimen is not regarded as sufficient to identify a particular species of dinosaur. However, George Olshevsky considered Apatodon to be synonymous with the contemporaneous Allosaurus fragilis. [11] The issue is now beyond resolution; however, as the type bone fragment has been lost. [12]
The name Apatodon is derived from Greek: απατη ("trick", "deceit") and οδους ( genitive οδοντος) (" tooth", in reference to its original, incorrect identification).