Ornithotarsus Explained

Ornithotarsus 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.

Taxonomy

Ornithotarsus 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]}

Notes and References

1. Cope, ED. 1869. Synopsis of the extinct Batrachia, Reptilia and Aves of North America. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. Philadelphia 14, 105–252.
2. 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.
3. 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 .