Kayentapus

Before formal naming or identification, this organism was known as the following on this wiki:
**Queensland theropod**

## Kayentapus

Kayentapus and Grallator in the Fengjiahe Formation tracksite. Credit: Yu Chen.

## Statistics

### Location

Africa, North America, Asia, and Australia

### Diet

Carnivorous

*Kayentapus* is an extinct ichnogenus of theropod dinosaur that lived in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America during the Jurassic.o

## Description

Fossils of *Kayentapus* footprints have been found worldwide, but tracks in the African Elliot Formation belonging to *K. ambrokholohali* are nearly 0.5 meters wide and 60 centimeters long. This is the earliest known evidence of megatheropods, dinosaurs like *Tyrannosaurus* and *Spinosaurus*. Scientists estimate *K. ambrokholohali* would have been 9 meters long. Depictions of *Kayentapus* vary, some depict it as a basic theropod, to dilophosaurs and coelophysoid. Due to the nature of its tracks, *K. ambrokholohali* may have been slimmer, and being an advanced ceolophysoid rather than a dilophosaur, and was the largest species. It has been speculated *K. ambrokholohali* was a large *Dracovenator*[*citation needed*].

In the 1950s and 1960s, workers found footprints on the roof of a coal mine on the Darling Downs. When the sediment was stripped, revealing tracks ~80 centimeter-long tracks (the largest is 79 centimeters) of many different dinosaurs. This area was previously a swampland covered in sand, which had hardened into sandstone over time. Walking with the Kayentapus were smaller predators (*Anchisauripus*) and stegosaurs (*Garbina*). At the time, the ichnofossil was reported on, but the remains sat in storage until described by Anthony Romilio, Steven W. Salisbury and Andréas Jannel. This animal would have been large, the paper estimating a hip height of 1.36-2.94 meters and a length of 5.46-9.38 meters. However, the press overestimated the size of this animal; instead stating it was 3 meters tall. This theropod was named cf. Kayentapus, and rivaled the megatheropods seen on other continents, such as *Tyrannosaurus*. These theropods are the only large ones known from Australia, and could have preyed on *Rhoetosaurus*. *Eubrontes* were later found to be *Evazoum*.

*K. xiaohebaensis* and *K.* sp. trackways were described from the Fengjiahe Formation alongside *Grallator*. They found these represent three distinct theropod species who frequently visited the site. Some of these roughly match the size of the contemporaneous *Sinosaurus*. These were split into multiple morphotypes before description A *Kayentapus* morphotype was reported by Moreau et al. (2022) from the Causses Basin. More *K.* sp. were described from the Imilchil Formation in 2022. Tentative tracks attributed to this genus and a similar, yet distinct morphotype were described from the Stormberg Group in 2023.

## Distribution

*Kayentapus* ichnofossils are found in Australia, China, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Lesotho, Poland, Slovakia, France, Sweden and the United States with an age range of 221.5-155.7 million years ago .

## Species

* *K. ambrokholohali*
* *K. damarensis*
* *K. hailiutuensis*
* *K. hopii*
* *K. jizhaoshiensis*
* *K. minor*
* *K. nananensis*
* *K. otariensis*
* *K. soltykovensis*
* *K. wumaensis*
* *K. xiaohebaensis*

## References

1. ↑ https://www.deviantart.com/hodarinundu/art/The-first-megatheropod-711693917
2. ↑ https://www.deviantart.com/megalotitan/art/Upper-Elliot-Formation-chart-793714663
3. ↑ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-18/australias-largest-meat-eating-theropod-identified-southern-qld/12366880
4. ↑ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912963.2020.1772252?journalCode=ghbi20
5. ↑ https://7news.com.au/technology/science/australian-dinosaur-larger-than-a-t-rex-once-roamed-queensland-scientists-discover-c-1107747
6. ↑ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/08912963.2021.1984447
7. ↑ https://peerj.com/articles/11788/
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0753396922000039
9. ↑ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912963.2022.2042808
10. ↑ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2023.2221306
11. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_dinosaur\_ichnogenera#K
12. ↑ 12.00 12.01 12.02 12.03 12.04 12.05 12.06 12.07 12.08 12.09 12.10 https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon\_no=68970