March 19, 2012
Paleontologists Announce Two Tiny Ceratopsians
When I think of ceratopsian dinosaurs, giant and well-ornamented forms such as Triceratops and Styracosaurus immediately spring to mind. These spiky creatures represent the acme of horned dinosaur decoration. But not all ceratopsians were insanely adorned heavyweights. There were small, lightly built ceratopsians running around the Late Cretaceous of Asia and North America, too, and last week paleontologists officially announced a pair of such dinosaurs.
Paleontologists first heard about Unescopceratops koppelhusae and Gryphoceratops morrisoni late last year, when a pre-print version of the paper describing the dinosaurs first appeared online. The publication of the official description this month gave the obscure dinosaurs a publicity boost. As paleontologist Michael Ryan explains in the video above, both dinosaurs were already known to scientists. One was a mystery dinosaur that had been described previously, and the other had been hiding in museum collections for decades. Very little is known about these ceratopsians, so the beautiful artwork combines known aspects of the dinosaurs with pieces from more completely known relatives. The announcement of Unescoceratops and Gryphoceratops serve as a reminder that not all the horned dinosaurs were enormous bruisers.
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
3 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
I find the colorful illustration beautiful but entirely too speculative. Basal neoceratopsids exhibited a wide range of morphologies. I mean, look at the difference between, say, Cerasinops or Archaeoceratops and Udanoceratops. These two new guys are each known from a jaw fragment!
This illustration is jumping the gun a bit, I’m afraid.
Any life reconstruction is going to involve speculation, especially when so little material is known.
I suppose one could argue that a jawbone is too little material to do a reconstruction at all, but in this case it is unlikely that better material will be found any time soon so any future reconstruction will most likely involve equal amounts of speculation.
I found myself hearing Michael Ryan say “I remember every dinosaur jaw bone I’ve ever seen, Mr. Potter.” And the sign out front reads “Ryan’s Dinosaur bits – since 347 BC”. The effect is magic.