Titanoceratops
| Titanoceratops | ||||||||||||
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Skeletal reconstruction of Titanoceratops . The skeleton was originally assigned to the genus Pentaceratops . |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (late Campanium ) | ||||||||||||
| 74 to 73 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Titanoceratops | ||||||||||||
| Longrich , 2011 | ||||||||||||
Titanoceratops ("Big Horn Face") is a genus of pelvic dinosaurs from the group of Ceratopsidae within the Ceratopsia that lived during the Upper Cretaceous (late Campanium ).
Titanoceratops in 2011 by Nicholas R. Long Rich using a fossil described , the original of the genus Pentaceratops has been assigned. The partial skeleton was recovered in New Mexico in 1941 from the Kirtland Formation in what is now New Mexico . The type species and so far the only species is Titanoceratops ouranos .
features
Titanoceratops had a 2.4 meter long skull and was therefore much larger than Pentaceratops , also had a longer nose, slightly longer horns and a thinner bone crest at the back of the head.
With an estimated weight of 6.5 to 7 tons, it weighed twice as much as an adult Pentaceratops , making it one of the largest dinosaurs in the North American campanium . Its total length was about 8 meters.
Systematics
A cladistic analysis showed that Titanoceratops is the sister genus of a clade of Eotriceratops , Triceratops and Torosaurus . The tribe of these gigantic ceratopsids, the Triceratopsini, may have developed during the Campanian in southern North America, five million years earlier than previously thought, and spread throughout the continent during the Maastrichtian .
literature
- Nicholas R. Longrich: Titanoceratops ouranos, a giant horned dinosaur from the Late Campanian of New Mexico. In: Cretaceous Research. Vol. 32, No. 3, ISSN 0195-6671 , pp. 264-276, doi : 10.1016 / j.cretres.2010.12.007 .
