Skartopus
Pronunciation
Scar-toe-pus
Meaning
Nimble foot
Period
Jurassic-Cretaceous (201.3-145mya)
Ichnospecies in Australia
australis
Ichnospecies meaning
Southern.
Origin and other locations
Lark Quarry Qld (Thulborn, Wade 1984).
Australian use and location
Lark Quarry Qld (Thulborn, Wade 1984), Mt Morgan Qld (Cook et al. 2010).
Description
At the Lark Quarry site, small theropod footprints are known as Skartopus australis. They are typically described as being longer than they are wide, symmetrical and sharp toed. They are small three toed theropod footprints about 2–5cm long, representing dinosaurs 13–22cm tall at the hips (no bigger than a brush turkey).
Mt Morgan has produced a single Skartopus footprint which, at 5cm long, likely represents a theropod 22cm tall (brush turkey-sized).
It was suggested that these trackways represented a junior synonym of Wintonopus at Lark Quarry, but this has been disproven by Thulborn (2014) and the two remain separate.