Montanoceratops
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| Montanoceratops Fossil range: Late Cretaceous |
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| Montanoceratops cerorhynchos Sternberg, 1951 |
Montanoceratops (meaning "Montana horned face") was a small ceratopsian dinosaur. It lived during the early Maastrichtian of the late Cretaceous Period. Its fossils, as its name indicates, have been found in Montana, USA.
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[edit] Discoveries and species
The first fossil remains of what we now know as Montanoceratops were collected in Buffalo Lake, Montana in the St Mary River Formation by Barnum Brown around 1916, he and his assistant Erich M. Schlaikjer publishing it in 1935 as Leptoceratops cerorhynchos. However, later C.M. Sternberg found more material of Leptoceratops which showed the former was a distinct genus and hence Montanoceratops was coined.
The original material collected by Barnum Brown was meagre; more of the skull was absent than present, as well there were some vertebrae, pelvis and hindlimb material. Further material was found and published in a paper by Brends Chinnery and David Weishampel in 1998.
[edit] Classification
Montanoceratops belonged to the Leptoceratopsidae within 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
Montanoceratops, 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
- Chinnery, BJ & Weishampel, DB (1998). "Montanoceratops cerorhynchus (Dinosauria: Ceratopsia) and relationships among basal neoceratopsians". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 18 (3): 569–585.
- http://www.vertpaleo.org/jvp/18-569-585.html (online abstract of preceding article)
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