What is "apatodon"

Apatodon is a dubious genus of dinosaur.

When Marsh named it, he thought it was a jaw with a tooth from a Mesozoic pig, but it was soon shown that the specimen was an eroded vertebra, from a dinosaur possibly from the Morrison Formation of Garden Park, Colorado. Marsh had misidentified the neural spine as the tooth of a pig-like animal (Baur, 1890).

The only recovered specimen is not regarded as sufficient to identify a particular species of dinosaur. However, George Olshevsky considered Apatodon to be synonymous with Allosaurus fragilis. The issue is now beyond resolution; however, as the type bone fragment has been lost.

The name was derived from Greek: απατη ("trick", "deceit") and οδους ( genitive οδοντος) (" tooth", in reference to its original, incorrect identification).