Diceratus
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| Diceratus Fossil range: Late Cretaceous |
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Diceratus ( "two-horned") is a ceratopsid herbivorous dinosaur genus from the Late Cretaceous period of North America. It is known only from a single poorly preserved skull discovered in Wyoming and described in 1905. For many years, it had been considered a species within the genus Triceratops, but recent analysis (Forster, 1996) suggests it is a distinct genus. It had been known as Diceratops until 2008.
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[edit] History
Diceratus was first described as Diceratops ("two horned face"), but it was found that the name was already in use for a hymenopteran (Foerster, 1868). It was given its current name by Octávio Mateus in 2008.[1]
The paper that described Diceratus was originally part of O. C. Marsh's magnum opus, his Ceratopsidae monograph. Unfortunately, Marsh died (1899) before the work was completed, and John Bell Hatcher endeavored to complete the Triceratops section. However, he died of typhus in 1904 at the age of 42, leaving the paper still uncompleted. It fell to Richard Swann Lull to complete the monograph in 1905, publishing Hatcher's description of a skull separately and giving it the name Diceratops hatcheri.
Since the Diceratops paper had been written by Hatcher, and Lull had only contributed the name and published the paper after Hatcher's death, Lull was not quite as convinced of the distinctiveness of Diceratops, thinking it primarily pathological. By 1933, Lull had had second thoughts about Diceratops being a distinct genus and he put it in a subgenus of Triceratops: Triceratops (Diceratops), including T. obtusus; largely attributing its differences to being that of an aged individual.
[edit] Description
The poorly preserved skull is the only fossil referred to Diceratus. Like Hatcher's other Triceratops skulls, it was found in eastern Wyoming. Superficially, it resembles that of Triceratops, but on closer examination, it is definitely odd: there is just a rounded stump where the nasal horn should be and the occipital (brow) horns stand almost vertically. Compared to other Triceratops skulls, it is slightly larger than average (2.0 m), but its face is rather short. There also are large holes in the frill, unlike other Triceratops skulls known. Some of these may be pathological, others seem to be genetic. Several authors have suggested that Diceratus may be directly ancestral to Triceratops, or perhaps its nearest relative.
[edit] Classification
Diceratus belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is Greek for "horned faces", Keratopia), 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. All ceratopsians became extinct at the end of this era.
[edit] Species
Type:
- Diceratus hatcheri (Hatcher vide Lull, 1905 [originally Diceratops]). Imperfectly preserved skull.
[edit] Diet
Diceratus, 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.
[edit] References
- Peter Dodson; The Horned Dinosaurs (1996)
- Forster CA (1996): Species resolution in Triceratops: cladistic and morphometric approaches. J.Vert.Paleont. 16(2): 259-270
[edit] External links
- Scroll down for horned dinosaurs
- Diceratus (as Diceratops) at DinoData
- Diceratops, from the Dinosaur Encyclopaedia at Dino Russ' Lair
