Location : N. America

Diplotomodon was one of the first dinosaurs discovered in North America, but for nearly a hundred years its remains were thought to belong to a fish! It is hard to believe that a dinosaur and a fish could be confused with each other but only a single tooth of this creature has been found. From this one piece of evidence we know that it was a medium sized meat-eater that lived in what is now New Jersey at the end of the age of dinosaurs.

Discovered in 1865, the single tooth upon which this genus was founded was at first thought to belong to a plesiosaur. Shortly after, it was classified as a fish and it remained a fish until 1952 when reexamination determined it to belong to a theropod, most likely a megalosaur. Most recently, it has been suggested that this is the tooth of Dryptosaurus  and that the genus Diplotomodon is not valid.