Yangtzepus
Pronunciation
Yang-tsee-puss
Meaning
Yangtze [river] foot
Period
Cretaceous (145 - 66mya)
Ichnospecies in Australia
clarkei
Ichnospecies meaning
For Nigel Clarke who assisted the team at Broome over the 2011-2016 research.
Origin and other locations
First described in China in 1960 by Young Chung-Chien.
Australian use and location
Broome region WA (Salisbury et al. 2016).
Description
Although the ichnogenus was originally proposed for what were thought to be orntihopod footprints, it has since been shown that they were made by a theropod dinosaur. The Yangtzepus tracks from Broome are 24-33cm long.
It is likely that prints like those assigned to Yangtzepus were observed by John Long in 1992: he mentioned theropod prints with an enlarged middle toe. However, these prints could not be relocated by Salisbury et al. (2016) for the purposes of comparison.