It was named by paleontologist Janensch in 1914. The type species is D. hansemanni . They lived during the late Permian and Triassic periods . A digit is a toe or a finger. Only a small part of the foot touches the ground and the animal can move very quickly.
Many predators are digitigrade.
Other animals that are digitigrade include dogs, cats, and birds. There is a pad of tissue on the back of the feet on these animals that acts like a shock absorber. Dilophosaurus was a carnivorous dinosaur from the early Jurassic period , about 208-194 million years ago. The type species is D. wetherilli . It usually means that an organism has two different types, for example, males and females of some species look different, and are said to be sexually dimorphic.