A man taking out the garbage at his Queens home last night made what he thought was a horrifying discovery when he stumbled upon a child’s severed foot.

Turns out it belonged to an animal, police said.

A police source said, “We’ve been told it’s not a child’s foot.”

Police were notified by the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Paul Lawrence found the foot at about 4:15 p.m. in front of 251-11 139th Ave., a three-story, three- family, home in Rosedale.

“It looked just like a piece of meat, a skinless piece of meat with bone,’’ said Lawrence, 49, a ground-floor resident. “I looked closer and decided it looked like a foot.” He called over the next-door neighbors, who own the house.

A third-floor resident, who asked to be identified only as Sharon, said she came home to see the lawn swarming with more than a dozen detectives and crime-scene technicians. One of the officers told her why they were there.

“That’s somebody’s baby!” the horrified woman said later.

Cops brought in at least two dogs who sniffed around the lawn and house.

Additional reporting by Larry Celona