Re: Four-toed theropods

[Neil Clark <nclark@museum.gla.ac.uk>]

Tim Williams wrote:-

>  Is it possible that these four-toed theropods are segnosaurs
> (therizinosauroids to some) - the first evidence of such from North
> America.

I too have a problem with a four toed possible theropod .... but not from the 
Cretaceous.  I found mine in the Middle Jurassic of Northern England. 
 The toes are elongate and pointed and slightly curved.  At first I 
thought it may have been the track of a croc or similar, but I showed 
it to Bill Sargeant who said it wasn't.  It remains a mystery and 
undescribed.  At least mine was not a segnosaur, perhaps a late 
surviving prosauropod? .... perhaps there is a group of theropods 
with four toes for which no ossified remains have been found???  
Tracks are notoriously difficult to assign to any group unless you 
find the animal that made them collapsed at the end of the trackway!

Neil 


Dr Neil Clark
Curator of Palaeontology
Hunterian Museum
University of Glasgow
GLASGOW
Scotland
G12 8QQ
Scotland/UK
email: NCLARK@museum.gla.ac.uk
Museum web site:-  http://www.gla.ac.uk/Museum/
Personal web site:- http://www.gla.ac.uk/~gxha14/

'Man must surely have become an immensely worse animal 
than his teeth show him to have been designed for'
Hugh Miller (Cruise of the Betsey - 1858)