Bagaceratops

Skull of Bagaceratops

• Mongolia

• B. rozhdestvenskyi Maryańska & Osmólska, 1975

Bagaceratops is a genus of bird Beck dinosaur ( Ornithischia ) from the family of Protoceratopsidae within the ceratopsians.

Features

Bagaceratops was a small, quadrupeder ( four-legged ) dinosaurs. He was closely related to Protoceratops, which he resembled. With approximately 1 meter in length but he was smaller. The skull was relatively large, the muzzle was pointed as with all Ceratopsiern, but shorter than in Protoceratops. The neck shield was formed as in all higher Ceratopsiern from parietal and squamosal, but relatively short. At the premaxillary bone ( premaxilla ) were small, pin-like teeth, the teeth further back in the mouth were leaf-shaped and adapted to a plant-based diet. On the nose there was a small bony ridge.

Discovery and designation

The fossil remains of Bagaceratops were discovered in the Mongolian Gobi province Ömn and first described in 1975. The name derives from the Mongolian baga ( = " small" ) and the Greek keratops ( = " horn face" ), a common name component of the ceratopsians, from, and alludes to the small size of this dinosaur to. Type species is B. rozhdestvenskyi. The remains are (middle Campanian ) dated to the Late Cretaceous to an age 80-76 million years.

System

Fastovsky and Weishampel (2005 ) Ascending Bagaceratops into the Protoceratopsidae. Alifanov described 2005 Lamaceratops and Platyceratops two related with Bagaceratops genera and merged these three together with the controversial Breviceratops in a new family, Bagaceratopsidae, a. According to Makovicky et al. (2006) it could only act to synonyms of Bagaceratops at all the above genres as well as in magnirostris.