Hortalotarsus

Hortalotarsus is a dubious genus of sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of southern Africa. The only species is H. skirtopodus. Hortalotarsus was described by Harry Seeley in 1894 based on parts of a hind limb discovered in the Clarens Formation near Makhanda, South Africa. Originally, these fossils were part of the larger part of a skeleton, locally known as the , that had been destroyed using gunpowder in an attempt to remove the bones from the encasing slate. In 1906, Robert Broom assigned a second specimen to the species but later gave it a species of its own, Gyposaurus capensis. In 1906, Friedrich von Huene classified Hortalotarsus skirtopodus as a species within the European genus Thecodontosaurus, named Thecodontosaurus skirtopodus. Other authors considered Hortalotarsus skirtopodus as a valid species within the family Anchisauridae, though Michael Cooper synonymised it with Massospondylus carinatus in 1981. The two most recent reviews treated Hortalotarsus as an indeterminate sauropodomorph.

== Discovery == Hortalotarsus skirtopodus was described by Harry Seeley in 1894 based on a specimen in the Albany Museum in Makhanda, South Africa. This specimen was found by Mr. William Horner Wallace on 11 June 1888 in "Eagle's Crag", Barkly East; the precise locality is unknown. The specimen comes from the Clarens Formation, which was deposited during a period of some 10 million years during the Pliensbachian and early Toarcian ages, ca. .