Prenoceratops

Prenoceratops
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous 83–74Ma
Cast of a skeleton at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Superorder: Dinosauria
Order: Ornithischia
Infraorder: Ceratopsia
Family: Leptoceratopsidae
Genus: Prenoceratops
Chinnery (2004)
Species

P. pieganensis Chinnery, 2004

Prenoceratops, (meaning 'bent or prone-horned face' and derived from Greek prene-/πρηνη- meaning 'bent forwards' or 'prone', cerat-/κερατ- meaning 'horn' and -ops/ωψ meaning 'face') is a genus of ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period. Its fossils have been found in the Two Medicine Formation in the present-day U.S. state of Montana. It lived in the Campanian, between 83 million and 74 million years ago.

Discovery and species

Restoration

Prenoceratops was first described by Brenda J. Chinnery in 2004. It is unusual in that it is the only basal neoceratopsian known from a bonebed.

Prenoceratops species include P. pieganensis (type).

Classification

Prenoceratops belonged to the Ceratopsia (which name is derived from Ancient Greek, meaning 'horned face'), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks, which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period. It is closely related to Leptoceratops, which it antedates by several million years. It is characterized by a lower, more sloping head than that of Leptoceratops.

Diet

Prenoceratops, 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.

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