Ceratops
| Ceratops | ||||||||||||
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Fig. Of the holotype from Marsh's first description (1888) |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (late Campanium ) | ||||||||||||
| 76.4 to 72 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Ceratops | ||||||||||||
| Marsh , 1888 |
Ceratops is a little known species of bird Beck dinosaurs (ornithopoda) from the group of Ceratopsidae .
From Ceratops only fragments of are skull known, namely the condyles of the occipital bone ( occipital condyles ) and a paired Horn root. The finds suggest belonging to the Ceratopsidae, a more precise systematic classification is not possible, so that the find is listed as nomen dubium .
The fossil remains of Ceratops were found in the Judith River Formation in the US state of Montana and were first described by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1888 . The name comes from the Greek and means "horn face". Based on this, numerous other names of Ceratopsia were later coined, such as Protoceratops and Triceratops . The type species is Ceratops montanus , in addition a number of other species have been described, all of which are now invalid. The finds are dated in the Upper Cretaceous (late Campanium ) to an age of 76 to 72 million years.
Marsh made Ceratops the type for the dinosaur taxa of the Ceratopsia and the Ceratopsidae . The forms "Ceratopia" and "Ceratopidae" (each without "s") are grammatically correct, but many scientific papers continue to use the incorrect names coined by Marsh.
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.