Pronunciation: veh-LOH-sih-pez
Meaning: Swift foot
Author/s: von Huene (1932)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Górny Slask, Poland
Discovery Chart Position: #164
Velocipes guerichi
Friedrich von Huene named Velocipes on the strength of what he believed to be the top bit of a left calf bone (that's a fibula, not a baby cow). Truth is, it's in such a terribly poor state you would be hard pressed to tell which part of the body it came from never mind which creature it belonged to.
It was discovered in the Lissauer Breccia Formation at Górny Slask, Poland in 1932 and all that can be said with any certainty is... it's a bone. Rahaut and Hungerbuhler tagged it "Vertebrata indet." in their 1998 review of European Triassic theropods which, as far as fossils go, is about as bad as it gets.
It was discovered in the Lissauer Breccia Formation at Górny Slask, Poland in 1932 and all that can be said with any certainty is... it's a bone. Rahaut and Hungerbuhler tagged it "Vertebrata indet." in their 1998 review of European Triassic theropods which, as far as fossils go, is about as bad as it gets.
(Gürich's Quick foot)Etymology
Velocipes is derived from the Latin "velocis" (swift) and "pes" (foot). The species epithet, guerichi (originally "gürichi"), honours German geologist, paleontologist and botanist Georg Julius Ernst Gürich (Guerich) who lived from September 1859 to August 1938.
Discovery
The only known fossil of Velocipes was discovered in an unamed formation at Lissauer Breccia, Górny Slask, Poland. The holotype is part of a leg bone, that von Huene described as the upper half of a left theropod calf in 1932. But the specimen is extremely poorly preserved and even its identification as a calf is doubtful. 
