Saltopus ("hopping foot") is a genus of very small bipedal dinosauriform containing the single species Saltopus elginensis from the late Triassic period of Scotland. It was about the size of a domestic cat, and would have been roughly long. Most of the length was accounted for by the tail. It had five-fingered hands, with the fourth and fifth finger reduced in size. Contrary to the original description, in 2011 it was established that the sacrum (hip vertebrae) was made up of two vertebrae, the primitive ancestral condition, not four. and it was later named and described by Friedrich von Huene in 1910 as the type species Saltopus elginensis. Some researchers, such as Gregory S. Paul, have suggested it may represent a juvenile specimen of a coelophysid theropod such as Coelophysis or Procompsognathus. Rauhut and Hungerbühler in 2000 concluded it is a primitive dinosauriform, not a true dinosaur, closely related to Lagosuchus. Michael Benton, continuing the studies of the late Alick Walker redescribing the fossil in 2011, found it to be a dinosauriform more derived than Lagosuchus.

A large phylogenetic analysis of early dinosaurs and dinosauromorphs by Matthew Baron, David B. Norman and Paul Barrett (2017) recovered Saltopus near the base of the dinosaur lineage, suggesting that it may represent the closest relative of true dinosaurs.

References

  • A photograph of the sandstone slab showing the only known Saltopus specimen, published by the twitter account of the Barret Lab at the London Natural History Museum
  • The counterpart of the Saltopus slab, from the same source