Saltopus

The Saltopus was a very small bipedal dinosaur, roughly 23 inches (60 centimeters) long, discovered in Scotland. It was a late Triassic carnivore, and there are paleontologists that dispute its classification as a dinosaur. The size of a small cat, it had hollow bones like those of a bird, probably weighed in at around two pounds (one kilogram), and had five-fingered hands and a long head with dozens of sharp teeth.

As small as it was, its carnivorous diet must have consisted primarily of scavenged carcasses or insects. It has been identified as a saurischian (lizard-hipped) dinosaur, a theropod (fast-moving bipedal carnivores with clawed digits and hands on the forelimbs), and a close relative of the Herrerasaurus of the Herrerasauria infraorder, but its taxonomy is in dispute because only fragmentary remains have been recovered. It may also have been a lagosuchid (a primitive reptile from which the dinosaurs arose) or an ornithosuchian (closely related cousins of dinosaurs) instead of a true dinosaur. It has also been suggested that the supposed Saltopus remains are, in fact, partial remains from some already-identified specimen.

The Saltopus (so named by Friedrick von Huene in 1910) is often confused with the Saltasaurus because of similarities of the names, though the two species are entirely unlike one another.