Agujaceratops

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Agujaceratops

Extinct (fossil)

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Sauropsida
Superorder:	Dinosauria
Order:	Ornithischia
Suborder:	Marginocephalia
Infraorder:	Ceratopsia
Family:	Ceratopsidae
Subfamily:	Ceratopsinae
Genus:	Agujaceratops Lucas, Sullivan & Hunt (2006)

Species

A. mariscalensis

Agujaceratops (Meaning "Horned face from Aguja") is a newly reclassified genus of ceratopsian dinosaur. Originally known as Chasmosaurus mariscalensis and described by Lehman in 1989, it was moved to a new genus by Lucas, Sullivan and Hunt in 2006. Lehman felt the habitat Agujaceratops lived in (at least where the fossil material was found) may have been a swamp, due to the nature of the sediments. Agujaceratops lived during the Late Cretaceous (Campanian stage).

1 Discovery and species
2 Classification
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Discovery and species

In 1938, three dinosaur bonebeds were excavated, and ceratopsian material was collected from Big Bend National Park by William Strain. This material was studied by Lehman some 50 years later and named Chasmosaurus mariscalensis, but at that time there was no definitive adult skull. Then, in 1991 further material was collected in Big Bend on an expedition led by Paul Sereno. Subsequent analysis resulted in the taxon being put in its own genus.

Ajugaceratops species

A. mariscalensis.

[edit] Classification

Agujaceratops is similar to both Pentaceratops and Chasmosaurus. Its short frill suggests it probably wasn't an ancestor of Pentaceratops. It lived in what is now Texas, and was found in strata from the Aguja Formation, dating to the Campanian (Judithian) portions of the Late Cretaceous.