Zuniceratops

Zuniceratops
Live reconstruction of Zuniceratops
Temporal occurrence
Upper Cretaceous ( Turonium )
93.9 to 89.7 million years
Locations
United States
Systematics
Marginocephalia Ceratopsia Neoceratopsia Coronosauria Zuniceratops
Scientific name
Zuniceratops
Wolfe & Kirkland , 1998
Art
Z. Christopheri Wolfe & Kirkland, 1998

Zuniceratops is a genus of pelvic dinosaurs (Ornithischia) from the group of Ceratopsia . It is a close relative of the Ceratopsidae .

features

From Zuniceratops only fragmentary remains are known so far, the findings have an animal with a length of 3 to 3.5 meters close. It shows some characteristics of the Ceratopsidae: two long over-eye horns and a neck shield with paired openings were already present. The limbs were relatively delicate and the teeth - compared to the tooth batteries of the Ceratopsidae - were simply built. Like all Ceratopsia, it was herbivorous.

Discovery and naming

In 1996, the son of the American paleontologist Douglas G. Wolfe, the then eight-year-old Christopher James Wolfe, found the first fossil remains of Zuniceratops , a skull and other bones. The site is the Moreno Hill Formation in New Mexico (USA). Wolfe and Kirkland described Zuniceratops for the first time in 1998. The name is derived from the Zuñi , a people of North American indigenous people, and the Greek keratops (= "horn face"), a common part of the Ceratopsia name. Type species and the only species described is Z. christopheri .

The finds are dated in the early Upper Cretaceous ( Turonian ) to an age of 94 to 89 million years. This makes Zuniceratops the oldest American ceratopsia.

Systematics

Zuniceratops is an important link between the more primitive Ceratopsia and the more highly developed Ceratopsidae . It shows some features that were previously only known from the Ceratopsidae, such as the super-eye horns. Other features, such as the teeth, on the other hand, are original. Cladistically it is regarded as the sister taxon of the Ceratopsidae, together they form the taxon of the Ceratopsoidea.

literature

• Peter Dodson , Catherine A. Forster, Scott D. Sampson: Ceratopsidae. In: David B. Weishampel , Peter Dodson, Halszka Osmólska (eds.): The Dinosauria . 2nd edition. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2004, ISBN 0-520-24209-2 , pp. 494-513.
• Douglas G. Wolfe, James I. Kirkland : Zuniceratops christopheri n. Gen. & N. Sp., A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Moreno Hill Formation (Cretaceous, Turonian) of west-central New Mexico. In: Spencer G. Lucas, James I. Kirkland, John W. Estep (Eds.): Lower and Middle Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems (= New Mexico Museum of Natural History. Bulletin. 14, ISSN  1524-4156 ). New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Albuquerque NM 1998, pp. 303-317, digitized .

Web links

Commons : Zuniceratops  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gregory S. Paul : The Princeton Field Guide To Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-13720-9 , p. 257, online .