Archaeoceratops
Name:
Archaeoceratops
(Ancient horned face).
Phonetic: Ar-kay-oh-seh-rah-tops.
Named By: Dong & Azuma - 1997.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Ornithischia, Ceratopsia, Archaeoceratopsidae.
Species: A. oshimai (type),
A.
yujingziensis.
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Up to about 90 centimetres long.
Known locations: China - Gansu Province.
Time period: Aptian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Two individual specimens
including a skull and partial post cranial remains.
Archaeoceratops
is yet another of the increasingly large number of basal ceratopsian
dinosaur remains that are coming from Asia. These remains point to
an Asian ancestral origin for all ceratopsians from Protoceratops
of
Mongolia, to huge and horned Triceratops
and Styracosaurus
of North
America.
Archaeoceratops
however was very different to these larger later forms. First,
Archaeoceratops seems to be better suited to a
bipedal stance when
walking, although it was probably quick to adopt a quadrupedal
posture for feeding upon low vegetation. Grasses had not yet evolved
so Archaeoceratops would have been a browser of low
vegetation,
something that would not change throughout the lineage of the
ceratopsian dinosaurs. Despite its small size lack of horns and
bipedal stance however, the early indications of how its descendants
would form can already be seen in the size of the skull. This skull
when compared to the proportions of similarly sized dinosaurs like the
ornithopods actually appears to be too big for the body, and later
quadrupedal ceratopsian dinosaurs would go down in natural history as
having some of the proportionately largest skulls in relation to their
overall body sizes.
Further reading
- On a primitive neoceratopsian from the Early Cretaceous of China.
Sino-Japanese Silk Road Dinosaur Expedition. - China Ocean Press,
Beijing 68-89. - Z. Dong & Y. Azuma - 1997.
- A new species of Archaeoceratops (Dinosauria:
Neoceratopsia) from the
Early Cretaceous of the Mazongshan area, northwestern China, Hai-Lu
You, Kyo Tanque & Peter Dodson, In New Perspectives on Horned
Dinosaurs: The Royal Tyrrell Museum Ceratopsian Symposium (Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press) - Michael J. Ryan, Brenda
J. Chinnery-Allgeier & David A. Eberth - 2010.
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