Apatodon

Apatodon is a dubiousgenus of dinosaur that may have been a theropod.^[1] The type, and only species, A. mirus, was named in 1877 by Othniel Charles Marsh.^[2] It was found in the Late Jurassic-aged Morrison Formation of Colorado.^[3]

When Marsh named Apatodon in 1877, he thought it was a jaw with a tooth from a Mesozoicpig, but it was soon shown that the specimen was an eroded vertebra, from a dinosaur possibly from the Morrison Formation of Garden Park, Colorado.^[2] Baur (1890) correctly identified that Marsh (1877) had misidentified the neural spine as the tooth of a pig-like animal.^[4]

Apatodon was assigned to Iguanodontoidea by Hay in 1902,^[5] to Ornithischia by von Huene in 1909,^[6] to Stegosauridae by von Zittel in 1911,^[7] and to Titanosaurinae by Steel in 1970,^[8] and also Casanovas et al. in 1987.^[9] (Kuhn in 1939 also listed Apatodon as a sauropod).^[10]

The only recovered specimen is not regarded as sufficient to identify a particular species of dinosaur. However, George Olshevsky considered Apatodon to be synonymous with the contemporaneous Allosaurus fragilis.^[11] The issue is now beyond resolution; however, as the type bone fragment has been lost.^[12]

The name Apatodon is derived from Greek: απατη ("trick", "deceit") and οδους (genitive οδοντος) ("tooth", in reference to its original, incorrect identification).