Graciliceratops

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Graciliceratops
Fossil range: Late Cretaceous

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Sauropsida
Superorder:	Dinosauria
Order:	Ornithischia
Suborder:	Cerapoda
Infraorder:	Ceratopsia
Family:	Ceratopsidae
Subfamily:	Ceratopsinae
Genus:	Graciliceratops Sereno et al., 2000

Species

G. mongoliensis Sereno et al., 2000

Graciliceratops is a Ceratopsian dinosaur first described by paleontologist Paul Sereno in 2000. It is known from the Late Cretaceous period and its fossils were found in Mongolia. Only a partial skeleton has been found.

The type (and only known) species is Graciliceratops mongoliensis.

1 Classification
2 Diet
3 References
4 Links

[edit] Classification

Graciliceratops belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is Greek for "horned face"), 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] Diet

Graciliceratops, 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.