Breviceratops

Breviceratops
Temporal occurrence
Upper Cretaceous ( Campanium )
83.6 to 72 million years
Locations
Mongolia
Systematics
Cerapoda Marginocephalia Ceratopsia Neoceratopsia Protoceratopsidae ? Breviceratops
Scientific name
Breviceratops
Kurzanov , 1990
Art
B. kozlowskii Maryańska & Osmólska, 1975

Breviceratops is a little-known, controversial genus of the bird pelvic dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the group of Ceratopsia .

From breviceratops far only incomplete skulls and isolated bones of the body skeleton are known. It should have been a medium-sized, around 2 meter long representative of the Protoceratopsidae. As with all Ceratopsians, the snout was pointed, but remarkably short and narrow. There was a small, flat horn on the nasal bone . On the intermaxillary bone there were small, pin-shaped teeth, the teeth behind were leaf-shaped and, like all ceratopsians, geared towards a vegetable diet.

The fossil remains of Breviceratops were discovered in the Mongolian province of Ömnö-Gobi and first described in 1975 , but still under the name Protoceratops kozlowskii . Only in 1990 was the genus Breviceratops established for this species, the genus name is derived from the Latin brevis (= "short") and the Greek keratops (= "horn face"), a common part of the Ceratopsier name. The finds are dated in the Upper Cretaceous ( Campanium ) to an age of 84 to 72 million years.

It is controversial whether Breviceratops is a valid genus. According to some researchers, it is a juvenile Bagaceratops .

literature

1. ^ Dougal Dixon : The World Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Creatures. Lorenz, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7548-1730-7 , p. 361.
2. ^ Paul C. Sereno : The fossil record, systematics and evolution of pachycephalosaurs and ceratopsians from Asia. In: Michael J. Benton , Mikhail A. Shishkin, David M. Unwin, Evgenii N. Kurochkin (eds.): The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2000, ISBN 0-521-55476-4 , pp. 480-516.