Albertaceratops
Albertaceratops nesmoi, live reconstruction
- North America (southern Canada, northern USA)
- Albertaceratops nesmoi
Albertaceratops ( " horn face of Alberta " ) is a genus ceratopsischer dinosaur ( ceratopsian ) from the North American Upper Cretaceous (middle Campanian ) million years ago, about 80-76. To date, the type ( type species ) Albertaceratops is only nesmoi known, reaching a body length of about six meters.
This dinosaur is a basal representative of the Centrosaurinae, a Untertaxon the Ceratopsia with comparatively short neck shield, whose representatives usually characterized by an expansive nose horn in conjunction with relatively small supraorbital horns.
Fund history
The former student Michael J. Ryan was held in 2001 fossils of this dinosaur that was like all Ceratopier a quadrupeder herbivores in the Oldman Formation in the southeast of the Canadian province of Alberta, about 290 kilometers southeast of Calgary. Known for its wealth of dinosaur remains rock formation is part of the Judith River Formation. Additional material from the Judith River Formation, which has been associated with this dinosaur, comes from the north-central Montana, so from the U.S. state, the south connects to Alberta. Six years later, described Ryan, at that time curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the new genus and species for the first time scientifically. The genus name he chose after the locality and the type - epithet he honored the farmer Cecil Nesmo, who had supported the excavation and was made on the grounds of the Fund. In his dissertation, published in 2003, Ryan had the dinosaurs still referred to as " Medusaceratops ".
Description
Albertaceratops is known from a nearly complete skull ( holotype TMP.2001.26.1 ) and other skull remains. The nose was a bony ridge. Another unusual feature is the combination of distinct, each about a meter long over eyes horns with an otherwise typical cent urines pink skull. The two outward-facing large horn cores on the neck shield are a characteristic feature that previously only ever seen from the Ceratopsinae and Zuniceratops. Zuniceratops was a Ceratopier with long horns, which is the oldest known representatives of this dinosaur line in North America, twelve million years older than Albertaceratops. With its combination of features to Albertaceratops up at the beginning of the development of Centrosaurinae in North America and mediates between Zuniceratops and younger forms with smaller horns with which it is closely related.
System
Albertaceratops
Centrosaurus
Achelousaurus
Ceratopsinae