Bellatoripes is an ichnogenus of footprint produced by a large theropod dinosaur so far known only from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta and British Columbia in Canada. The tracks are large and three-toed, and based on their size are believed to have been made by tyrannosaurids, such as Albertosaurus and Daspletosaurus. Fossils of Bellatoripes are notable for preserving trackways of multiple individual tyrannosaurids all travelling in the same direction at similar speeds, suggesting the prints may have been made by a group, or pack, of tyrannosaurids moving together. Such inferences of behaviour cannot be made with fossil bones alone, so the record of Bellatoripes tracks together is important for understanding how large predatory theropods such as tyrannosaurids may have lived.
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R. T. McCrea, L. G. Buckley, and J. O. Farlow, M. G. Lockley, P. J. Currie, N. A. Matthews, S. G. Pemberton. 2014. A ‘terror of tyrannosaurs’: the first trackways of tyrannosaurids and evidence of gregariousness and pathology in Tyrannosauridae. PLoS ONE 9(7):e103613:1-13
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R. T. McCrea, L. G. Buckley, and J. O. Farlow, M. G. Lockley, P. J. Currie, N. A. Matthews, S. G. Pemberton. 2014. A ‘terror of tyrannosaurs’: the first trackways of tyrannosaurids and evidence of gregariousness and pathology in Tyrannosauridae. PLoS ONE 9(7):e103613:1-13
DOI ↗