Gobiceratops
Encyclopedia
Gobiceratops is a genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of ceratopsia
Ceratopsia
Ceratopsia or Ceratopia is a group of herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs which thrived in what are now North America, Europe, and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period, although ancestral forms lived earlier, in the Jurassic. The earliest known ceratopsian, Yinlong downsi, lived between 161.2 and 155.7...

n dinosaur
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

 from the Upper Cretaceous of Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...

. It is based on
Holotype
A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...

 a skull that is 3.5 centimeters (1.4 in) long, from the Khermin Tsav locality in the Barun Goyot Formation
Barun Goyot Formation
The Barun Goyot Formation , dating from the Late Cretaceous Period, is located within and is widely represented in the Gobi Desert basin, in the Ömnögovi Province of Mongolia....

 of southern Mongolia; the type individual was young. Gobiceratops is thought to have been related to Bagaceratops
Bagaceratops
Bagaceratops, meaning "small-horned face" , is a genus of ceratopsian dinosaur that lived in what is now Mongolia around 80 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous...

, and a member of Bagaceratopidae
Bagaceratopidae
Bagaceratopidae is a family of neoceratopsian dinosaurs. It was named by Alifanov in 2003 but no definition has been proposed. Because of lacking of the definition, Bagaceratopidae was considered inactive by Paul Sereno in 2005...

. It was described in 2008 by Alifanov. The type species
Type species
In biological nomenclature, a type species is both a concept and a practical system which is used in the classification and nomenclature of animals and plants. The value of a "type species" lies in the fact that it makes clear what is meant by a particular genus name. A type species is the species...

is G. minutus.
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