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Avaceratops
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
Superorder: Dinosauria
Order: Ornithischia
Suborder: Marginocephalia
Infraorder: Ceratopsia
Family: Ceratopsidae
Genus: Avaceratops
Dodson, 1986
Species
A. lammersi
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Avaceratops was a small Ceratopsian dinosaur which lived during the late Campanian during the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now the Northwest United States.
Discoveries and species
Its fossils were found in Montana, in the early 1980s, by Eddie Cole and named in 1986, by Peter Dodson. It was named after Ava, Eddie's wife. The specific name honours the Lammers family, who owned the land where the holotype fossil was found.
Avaceratops Species
- A. lammersi Dodson, 1986; type
Classification
Avaceratops belonged to the family Ceratopsidae within the Ceratopsia (both names being derived from Ancient Greek for 'horned face'), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in what are now North America and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period. Its exact position is uncertain within this group. It is a smallish Ceratopsian with a solid frill (i.e. lacking fenestrae which are typical of many other genera except Triceratops), thus it may be somehow ancestral to Triceratops or occupy a position between the two subfamilies Centrosaurinae and Ceratopsinae. This latter opinion was the one reached by Penkalski and Dodson in 1999.
Diet
Avaceratops, like all Ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp Ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles.
Referances
- Dodson, P. (1996). The Horned Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. ISBN 0-691-05900-4.
- Penkalski, P & Dodson, P (1999). "The morphology and systematics of Avaceratops, a primitive horned dinosaur from the Judith River Formation (Late Campanian) of Montana, with the description of a second skull.". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19 (4): 692–711.
- http://www.vertpaleo.org/jvp/19-692-711.html (online abstract of the preceding)
- http://www.dinosaurvalley.com/groups.html
- http://208.164.121.55/reference/dinosaur/dodson.htm
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