''Stegopodus'' is an ichnogenus erected in

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

for the second set of

stegosaur Stegosauria is a group of herbivorous ornithischian dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. Stegosaurian fossils have been found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, predominantly in what is now North America, Europe, ...

tracks from the

Morrison Formation The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Late Jurassic, Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandsto ...

. The tracks were found near

Arches National Park Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, a ...

, also in Utah. Unlike the first, this

trackway Historic roads (historic trails in USA and Canada) are paths or routes that have historical importance due to their use over a period of time. Examples exist from prehistoric times until the early 20th century. They include ancient trackway ...

preserved traces of the forefeet. Fossil remains indicate that stegosaurs have five digits on the forefeet and three weight-bearing digits on the hind feet. From this, paleontologists were able to successfully predict the appearance of stegosaur tracks in

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

, six years in advance of the first actual discovery of Morrison stegosaur tracks. Since the erection of ''Stegopodus'', more trackways have been found, however none have preserved traces of the front feet, and stegosaur traces remain rare.

Footnotes

References

* Foster, J. (

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

). ''Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World''. Indiana University Press. 389pp. Stegosaurs {{jurassic-reptile-stub

See also

Footnotes

References