Utahceratops

Utahceratops gettyi, skeletal reconstruction and body outline. Ocher, the retrieved elements of the skeleton.

• Utah

• Utahceratops gettyi (type )

Utahceratops ( " horn face from Utah ") is a dinosaur genus from the group of ceratopsians or from its subgroup Chasmosaurinae. Utahceratops lived during the Late Cretaceous (late Campanian ) in the area of present-day Utah ( USA); their fossils have been uncovered in the Kaiparowits Formation.

Was first described in the genus of researchers led by Scott Sampson in 2010, only way is gettyi Utahceratops. The specific epithet honors the finder of the holotype, Mike Getty.

Features

The holotype ( specimen number UMNH VP 16784 ) is a partially preserved skull. Other discoveries include an almost complete, 2.3 -meter-long skull, which was found in connection with the rest of the skeleton, a skull of the fragmentary young animal as well as some isolated skull bones found with.

From other representatives of Ceratopsia to Utahceratops differs from a number of unique features ( autapomorphies ): So the nose horn sits relatively far back and is almost entirely behind the nostrils. The supraorbital horns are directed short, robust and obliquely upward and to the side ( dorsolateral ). They are flattened and blunt at the tip. The neck plate shows as with other Ceratopsiden a crown of thorn -like appendages. The mean of these extensions on the sides of the neck plate (the middle Episquamosale ) were particularly low and elongated at Utahceratops and were sometimes over 10 inches long.

Reconstruction of the skull

Source

• Scott D. Sampson, Mark A. Loewen, Andrew A. Farke, Eric M. Roberts, Catherine A. Forster, Joshua A. Smith, Alan L. Titus: New Horned Dinosaurs from Utah Provide Evidence for Intra Continental Dinosaur Endemism. In: PLoS ONE. 5, No. 9, 2010, pp. e12292. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012292.