Koreaceratops
Hypothetical reconstruction of live Koreaceratops as amphibious live animal
- South Korea ( Tando Basin )
Koreaceratops is a genus of bird Beck dinosaur ( Ornithischia ) from the group of ceratopsians.
Discovery and designation
The fossil remains of Koreaceratops were near the city of Hwaseong discovered in South Korea and first described in 2010. The genus name is derived from Korea and the Greek keratops ( = " horn face" ), a common name component in Ceratopsiern, from. Type species and only described species is K. hwaseongensis, the specific epithet was derived from the city of Hwaseong. Koreaceratops is the first on the Korean peninsula discovered ceratopsians.
Features
Koreaceratops was a small member of the ceratopsian. Yet a single skeleton is known, which consists of an almost complete tail, both sciatic and lower parts of the rear legs of foot bones. The tail skeleton obtained consists of 36 vertebrae and is 81 inches long. Probably missing four to five vertebrae. Characteristic of the genus are very high neural arches of the anterior caudal vertebrae, which are five times higher than the corresponding vertebral body. Similar elongated neural arches are also used in Montanoceratops, Udanoceratops, Protoceratops and Bagaceratops before, are developed independently from each these only distantly related to each other genera and may be an adaptation to an amphibious lifestyle. In this case, the high neural arches would have served as a support for a high, laterally flattened tail rudder. Another feature of the unique Koreaceratops provided with two pits astragalus, which are separated by an eye-catching ridge.
Systematics and dating
Koreaceratops is expected within the Ceratopsia to the primitive ( basal ) representatives of Neoceratopsia. According to the first to describe it is more sophisticated than archaeoceratops but primitive as Cerasinops and all ceratopsians more developed. The finds date from the Tando Basin, a rock unit, the sediments could be dated to an age of about 103 million years, and thus fall within the Albian, the latest stage of the Lower Cretaceous.