Grallator
Pronunciation
Grall-at-ore
Meaning
One who goes on stilts (quite long strides)
Period
Triassic - Jurassic (251.902 - 201.3mya)
Ichnospecies in Australia
Not specified.
Ichnospecies meaning
N/A
Origin and other locations
Originally described by Edward B Hitchcock 1858 in the USA.
Australian use and location
Mt Morgan Qld (Cook et al. 2010); Rhondda Colliery Qld (Thulborn 2000).
Description
Three toed theropod footprints, the Grallator prints at Rhondda Colliery are 5cm–10cm long so the dinosaur that made them must have been quite small. Along with the Eubrontes footprints, these footprints are the earliest evidence we have in the whole of Australia for dinosaurs at about 220 mya.
At Mt Morgan, Grallator footprints vary in length from 4–18cm (with one big one measuring 28cm long).
These prints look similar to Eubrontes footprints but are much smaller. It has been suggested that Eubrontes footprints were made by subadults of the dinosaur responsible for the Grallator footprints (with Eubrontes as the senior synonym), but this is very difficult to prove.