Bagaceratops
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bagaceratops Fossil range: Late Cretaceous |
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B. rozhdestvenskyi |
Bagaceratops ("small-horned face") is a genus of ceratopsian dinosaur that lived in Asia around 80 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous. It was around 1 m (3 ft) long, 0.5 m (1.5 ft) high, and weighed around 22 kg (50 lb). It was found in Mongolia. Baga is Mongolian for "small"; ceratops is Greek for "horn face". Bagaceratops had a smaller frill and more triangular skull than its close relative Protoceratops, but was otherwise very similar, having a beak but no brow horns. Bagaceratops evolved later but is considered the more primitive of the two.
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[edit] Discovery and Species
Bagaceratops is known from five complete and twenty partial crania, the longest of which is 17 cm long. The skulls are spread throughout the life cycle of the animal, with the smallest being only 4.7 cm long, so the growth cycle is relatively well understood.
Juvenile remains, initially tentatively named Protoceratops kozlowskii, and then renamed Breviceratops kozlowskii by Kurzanov in 1990 are now felt to be juvenile Bagaceratops. Sereno (2000) explained this by extrapolating that the juvenile Breviceratops would grow into a mature Bagaceratops.
Bagaceratops Species
- B. rozhdestvenskyi
The type species, B. rozhdestvenskyi, was named in honor of the Russian paleontologist A. K. Rozhdestvensky.
[edit] Classification
Bagaceratops belonged to the Ceratopsia, a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period, which ended roughly 65 million years ago. Within this, it has been alternately placed in its own family, Bagaceratopsidae, or within Protoceratopsidae.
[edit] Diet
Bagaceratops, like all ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", and so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles.
