What species of dinosaur was this?

[smokeythecat]

Found years ago in Western Massachusetts. It is 7" long at the longest point. Ideas?

 

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[DizzyDigger]

No idea what kind of dinosaur, but it's a very cool find. My first thought after
seeing the pic was Wylie Coyote was squashed in it's footprint...

 

[Red-Coat]

What a terrific (ichno)fossil. Did you find it personally?

Three-toed footprints like that are usually assigned to the ichnogenus “Grallator”. They typically range up to about 8 inches and, although the imprints exhibit only three toes, the trackmakers were probably four- or five-toed bipedal theropod dinosaurs of various species.

The Grallator ichnogenus is used in situations where the actual dinosaur genus is not known but aspects of its size, anatomy and locomotion can be inferred from the tracks it made. The ichnogenus is then further divided into ichnospecies from observed characteristics of the prints.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grallator

In America, many of them are believed to have been made by small theropods such as Coelophysis based on bone fossil remains often found in association but those tracks don’t often get as long as 7 inches and are characteristically narrow (the width being around 40% of the length). Larger tracks with greater width (where the width is around 65% of the length) are often attributed to the ichnogenus Eubrontes, but as juveniles unless the prints are very large.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eubrontes

Possible candidates for the actual genus responsible for Eubrontes prints include Teratosaurus (strictly speaking not a true dinosaur), Podokesaurus and Dilophosaurus although no remains of the latter have been found in association with such tracks.

 

[smokeythecat]

No, I bought this one. Thanks guys.

 

[Red-Coat]

No, I bought this one. Thanks guys.

Ah... OK.

I would think the seller or whoever prepped it has enhanced the print with powdered graphite or something similar. That's commonly done to help the print to stand out from the matrix and doesn't detract from its collector desirability.