Cerasinops

Cerasinops (meaning 'cherry face') was a small ceratopsian dinosaur. It lived during the Campanian of the late Cretaceous Period.[1] Its fossils have been found in Two Medicine Formation, in Montana. The type species of the genus Cerasinops is C. hodgskissi.

Life restoration

Cerasinops
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, Campanian
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Order: †Ornithischia
Family: †Leptoceratopsidae
Genus: †Cerasinops
Chinnery & Horner, 2007
Species:
†C. hodgskissi
Binomial name
†Cerasinops hodgskissi
Chinnery & Horner, 2007

Cerasinops was named and described by Brenda Chinnery and Jack Horner in 2007 from a specimen (MOR 300) almost 80% complete. Cerasinops belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is Ancient Greek for 'horned face'), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks that throve in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period. Within this group, it has been placed as a basal member of Neoceratopia, although the description is variable; at one point, it is explicitly assigned to Leptoceratopsidae, but in others, it is considered a sister taxon to Leptoceratopsidae, or as a neoceratopsian in general.[2]

See also

References
  1. "Missing Link" Dinosaur Discovered in Montana, a National Geographic article; the photographed skeleton is actually from Montanoceratops.
  2. Chinnery, Brenda J.; Horner, John R. (2007). "A new neoceratopsian dinosaur linking North American and Asian taxa". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 27 (3): 625–641. doi:10.1671/0272-4634(2007)27[625:ANNDLN]2.0.CO;2.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.