''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 Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...

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 (North America, Europe and Asia), Africa and South A ...

tracks from the

Morrison Formation The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of 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, sandstone, siltston ...

. The tracks were found near

Arches National Park Arches National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States in eastern Utah. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, north of Moab, Utah. The park contains more than 2,000 natural arch, natural ...

, also in Utah. Unlike the first, this

trackway Historic roads (or historic trails in the US 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 track ...

preserved traces of the forefeet. Fossil remains indicate that stegosaurs have four 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 Important events of 1990 include the Reunification of Germany and the unification of Yemen, the formal beginning of the Human Genome Project (finished in 2003), the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the separation of Namibia from South ...

, 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 2007 was designated as the International Heliophysical Year and the International Polar Year. Events January * January 1 **Bulgaria and Romania 2007 enlargement of the European Union, join the European Union, while Slovenia joins the Eur ...

). ''Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World''. Indiana University Press. 389pp. Stegosauria {{trace-fossil-stub

See also

Footnotes

References