Xenoceratops
- Foremost Formation ( Canada )
- Xenoceratops foremostensis Ryan et al. 2,012
Xenoceratops is a genus of bird Beck dinosaurs from the family Ceratopsidae. Their only known representative, Xenoceratops foremostensis, lived about 78 million years ago in the late Cretaceous in western North America. The fossil remains of the species have been excavated in the 1950s in the Canadian Foremost Formation and described in November 2012 as a new genus and species. Osteological analyzes, they record as the most primitive representatives of Centrosaurinae.
Features
Xenoceratops of previously known only to the structure of the parietal bone. It shows the typical Centrosaurinae shape of an arc that connects the upper side of the skull and was spanned in living animals with skin, so he made a great neck shield. Allow reconstruction of the skull Xenoceratops suspect that the neck plate on the cheeks was occupied with a large hump and had four other smaller bone bump on the sides. At the two vertices of the pronotum probably sat two horn -like projections, the inclined side faced up. This is concluded from the shape of the parietal bone sheets, enclosed high, oval window, which as also occurs in Diabloceratops or Albertaceratops. Both species showed two upwardly facing, large horns on the upper edge of her neck shield. In his other Xenoceratops morphology corresponded with features such as beaked snout, strong body and large head probably the typical structure of Ceratopsidae.
Locality, fossil material and stratigraphy
The location of all Xenoceratops fossils located in the southern Alberta, near the Saskatchewan border and the United States. It is a disruption of the Foremost formation between the villages of Medicine Hat in the north, Manyberries in the east, in the southeast and Onefour Foremost in the West. The Foremost Formation dates from the middle Cenomanian and forms a transition from marine sediments of the Western Interior Seaway to non-marine Oldman Formation. It consists predominantly of marine sediments, but also includes continental deposits. The Xenoceratops remnants came from a collection of bones that lay between oyster deposits and the Taberkohleschicht and was embedded in a layer of shale. They belong to various full-grown individuals. The Fund layer is dated to around 78 million years, and was on the northeast coast of the continent Laramidia, which roughly corresponds to the mountainous western part of present-day North America.
Paleoecology
About the paleoecology of Xenoceratops very little is known. Like all ceratopsians the animals were probably herbivores. The habitat of Xenoceratops was probably one located on the beach or near beach ecosystem. His Paläofauna is explored only fragmentary; they included not only Xenoceratops also Pachycephalosaurier Colepiocephale lambei. Other species have been described by way of teeth. Nevertheless, but most big dinosaur families of the late Cretaceous period were well represented in the Foremost - ecosystem, as suggested by isolated bone finds.
Systematics and Taxonomy
Chasmosaurinae
Xenoceratops
Diabloceratops
Spinops
Centrosaurus
Coronosaurus
Sinoceratops
Rubeosaurus
Achelousaurus
The later type series of Xenoceratops 1958 in the Badlands of Chin Coulee, about 7 km north-west of Foremost found by When Langston. After she had stored for over 50 years in the Canadian Museum of Nature, Michael Ryan, David Evans and Kieran Shepherd identified the fossils as a Ceratopsiden. They described him as foremostensis Xenoceratops, the holotype includes a parietal bone (inventory number 53282 CMN ). The ancient Greek Xenos ( " alien ") in the genus name refers to the absence of other Ceratopsiden in the Foremost Formation, ceratops ( ancient Greek for " horn face" ) arranges the genus in its family. The specific epithet foremostensis presents in the locality in southern Alberta.
The systematic analysis of osteological features fine, Ryan and colleagues who carried out, Xenoceratops classified as a representative of the basalsten Centrosaurinae, which were characterized by long nose horns and relatively short neck shields and reduced frontal horns. Xenoceratops forms the sister taxon to all other penny Pink urines and is one of their earliest occupied representatives. Only Diabloceratops is with about 79 million years ago, slightly older, but branches off a little later on in the pedigree.