Nedoceratops
Name:
Nedoceratops
(Insufficient horned face).
Phonetic: Nee-doh-seh-rah-tops.
Named By: A. S. Ukrainsky - 2007.
Synonyms: Diceratops, Diceratus,
Triceratops (Diceratops) hatcheri.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Ornithischia, Ceratopsia, Ceratopsidae, Ceratopsinae.
Species: N. hatcheri (type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Uncertain due to lack of postcranial remains,
but skull is 1.8 meters long.
Known locations: USA, Wyoming - Lance
Formation.
Time period: Maastrichtian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Skull.
Nedoceratops
is a genus of ceratopsian
dinosaur that lived in North America in the
late Cretaceous. So far only a single skull has been attributed to
the genus, but originally this skull was called Diceratops.
When
this name was found to already be in use however, the name
Nedoceratops was given to the skull. One year
later Oct�vio Mateus,
then unaware that a new genus had been created, named the skull
Diceratus, which is now listed as a synonym to Nedoceratops.
In
life Nedoceratops would have been a medium to large
genus of
ceratopsian dinosaur. The name Nedoceratops is a
reference to the
lack of a nasal horn.
Nedoceratops
is currently seen as a dubious genus with some researchers considering
the skull to be valid, while others consider it to belong to an
already named genus. Indeed, Nedoceratops got
caught up early in
the great Triceratops/Torosaurus
synonymy debate. This started in
2010 when John Scanella and John Horner proposed that Torosaurus
was
the true adult form of Triceratops, and that the
holotype skull of
Nedoceratops was the link that showed this growth.
However, a later
study by Andrew Farke showed that the holes in Nedoceratops
were
probably the result of disease and did not match the form of the holes
seen in Torosaurus. At the time of writing
Scanella and Horner
concede that Nedoceratops is probably not ‘the’
transitional form
that they need to prove their theory, but insist that the holotype
skull is of a diseased Triceratops.
Further reading
- Restoration of the horned dinosaur Diceratops.
- American
Journal of Science. Series 4, 4: 420–422. - Richard Swann
Lull - 1905.
- A new replacement name for Diceratops Lull,
1905 (Reptilia:
Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae). - Zoosystematica Rossica,
16(2). - A. S. Ukrainsky - 2007.
- Two ornithischian dinosaurs renamed: Microceratops
Bohlin 1953
and Diceratops Lull 1905. - Journal of Paleontology 82
(2): 423. - Oct�vio Mateus - 2008.
- Synonymy of the genera Nedoceratops Ukrainsky,
2007 and
Diceratus Mateus, 2008 (Reptilia:
Ornithischia:
Ceratopidae). (Sinonimiya rodov Nedoceratops
Ukrainsky, 2007
Diceratus Mateus, 2008 (Reptilia:
Ornithischia:
Ceratopidae). - Paleontologicheskii zhurnal, 2009(1):
108.) - Paleontological Journal, 2009 43(1):116. - A.
S. Ukrainsky - 2009.
- Anatomy and Taxonomic Status of the Chasmosaurine Ceratopsid
Nedoceratops hatcheri from the Upper Cretaceous
Lance Formation of
Wyoming, U.S.A. PLoS ONE 6 (1). - A. A. Farke (Leon
Claessens, ed) - 2011.
- Nedoceratops: An Example of a Transitional Morphology. - PLoS
ONE 6 (12). - John B. Scanella, John R. Horner
& Leon Claessens - 2011.
- Is Torosaurus Triceratops?
Geometric Morphometric Evidence of
Late Maastrichtian Ceratopsid Dinosaurs. - PLoS ONE 8 (11):
e81608. - Leonardo Maiorino, Andrew A. Farke, Tassos
Kotsakis, Paolo Piras & Richard J. Butler - 2013.
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