Zuniceratops

Live reconstruction of Zuniceratops

• USA

Features

From Zuniceratops only fragmentary remains are known to date, the findings suggesting that an animal with a length of 3 to 3.5 meters close. It has some characteristics of Ceratopsidae: so two long over eyes horns and provided with paired openings neck shield were already present. The limbs, however, were relatively petite and the teeth were - compared with the tooth batteries Ceratopsidae - built simple. Like all ceratopsians he was herbivorous.

Discovery and designation

1996 was the son of the American paleontologist Douglas G. Wolfe, the then eight- year-old Christopher James Wolfe, the first fossil remains of Zuniceratops, a skull and other bones. The site is the Moreno Hill Formation in New Mexico ( USA). Wolfe and Kirkland described Zuniceratops the first time in 1998. The name is derived from the Zuni, a Native North American people, and the Greek keratops ( = " horn face" ), a common name component of the ceratopsians, from. Type species and only described species is christopheri Z..

The finds are dated to the early Late Cretaceous ( Turonian ) in age 94-89 million years. Zuniceratops is the oldest American ceratopsians.

System

Zuniceratops provides an important link between the urtümlicheren Ceratopsia and the more developed Ceratopsidae dar. It shows some features that were previously known only from the Ceratopsidae, such as the supraorbital horns. Other features, like the teeth, however, are primordial. Kladistisch he is regarded as the sister taxon Ceratopsidae, together they form the taxon Ceratopsoidea.