Hongshanosaurus

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Hongshanosaurus

Hongshanosaurus ( hawng-SHAN-o-SAWR-us; "Red Hill lizard") is a genus

Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
of psittacosaurid ceratopsian dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrate animals of Landform ecosystems for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic Period until the end of the Cretaceous Period , when most of them became extinct in the Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event....
from the Early Cretaceous Period of eastern Asia. Although two skull

Skull

The skull is a bone structure found in the head of many animals. The skull supports the structures of the face and protects the head against injury....
s are the only fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
material known, comparisons with close relatives suggest it was a small, biped

Biped

Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an organism Motion by means of its two rear limbs, or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped , meaning "two feet" ....
al herbivore

Herbivore

Herbivory is a form of predation in which an organism, known as an herbivore, heterotrophs principally autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria....
with a bony beak

Beak

The beak, bill or rostrum is an external anatomical structure of birds which, in addition to eating, is used for Personal grooming#In animals, manipulating objects, killing prey, probing for food, Courtship#Courtship in the animal kingdom and feeding their young....
on the end of both upper and lower jaws. This is one of the many exceptionally well-preserved fossils to be recovered from the Yixian Formation

Yixian Formation

The Yixian Formation is a geological formation in Jinzhou, Liaoning, People's Republic of China, that stems from the early Cretaceous period. It is known for its fossils....
of Liaoning

Liaoning

is a Northeast China political divisions of China of the People's Republic of China. Its one-Chinese character abbreviation is Liao ."Li?o" is an ancient name for this region, which was adopted by the Liao Dynasty which ruled this area between 907 and 1125....
, China

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
.

generic name Hongshanosaurus is derived from the Mandarin Chinese words ? (hóng: "red") and ? (shan: "hill"), as well as the Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
word sauros ("lizard") .

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Hongshanosaurus'

Start a new discussion about 'Hongshanosaurus'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Hongshanosaurus ( hawng-SHAN-o-SAWR-us; "Red Hill lizard") is a genus

Genus

Dinosaur

Skull

The skull is a bone structure found in the head of many animals. The skull supports the structures of the face and protects the head against injury....
s are the only fossil

Fossil

Biped

Herbivore

Herbivory is a form of predation in which an organism, known as an herbivore, heterotrophs principally autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria....
with a bony beak

Beak

Yixian Formation

The Yixian Formation is a geological formation in Jinzhou, Liaoning, People's Republic of China, that stems from the early Cretaceous period. It is known for its fossils....
of Liaoning

Liaoning

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
.

Discovery and Species

The generic name Hongshanosaurus is derived from the Mandarin Chinese words ? (hóng: "red") and ? (shan: "hill"), as well as the Greek

Ancient Greek

Hongshan culture

The Hongshan culture was a Neolithic culture in northeastern China. Hongshan sites have been found in an area stretching from Inner Mongolia to Liaoning and Hebei, and dated from about 4700 BC to 2900 BC....
of northeastern China

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, who lived in the same general area in which the fossil skull of Hongshanosaurus was found.

Hongshanosaurus Species

H. houi (type)

The one named species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring....
(H. houi) honors Hou Lianhai, a professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology

Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology

The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of People's Republic of China is a prominent research institution and museum for fossils, including many dinosaur and pterosaur specimens ....
(IVPP) in Beijing

Beijing

is a metropolis in northern China and the Capital of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the four municipality of China, which are equivalent to province in China's Political divisions of China....
, who curated

Curator

Curator , means manager, Wiktionary:overseer.Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a culture heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's Collection s and, together with a publications specialist, their associated collections catalogs....
the specimen. Genus and species were both named by Chinese paleontologists You Hailu, Xu Xing

Xu Xing

Xu Xing is a famed China Paleontology who has named many dinosaurs, including the new Jurassic Ceratopsian Yinlong, the feathered relative of Tyrannosaurus Guanlong, the unusual Gigantoraptor, and the "sleeping dragon" Mei ....
, and Wang Xiaolin in 2003.

The holotype

Holotype

A holotype is one of several possible biological types. A type is what fixes a name to a taxon. A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described....
specimen of Hongshanosaurus is a juvenile skull, completely preserved except for part of the right side and the tip of the upper jaw. This skull is slightly less than 5 centimeters (2 in.) long (You et al. 2003). A much larger adult skull was later described, which is almost 20 centimeters (8 in.) long. It is very similar to skulls of the closely related Psittacosaurus
Psittacosaurus

Psittacosaurus is a genus of psittacosaurid ceratopsian dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period of what is now Asia, about 130 to 100 million years ago....
, although several differences exist which serve to differentiate the two genera. Hongshanosaurus has a lower skull than any species of Psittacosaurus and the orbit

Orbit (anatomy)

In anatomy, the orbital bone is the cavity or socket of the skull in which the eye and its adnexa are situated.It can also mean the skin which surrounds the eye of a bird....
(eye socket) is elliptical instead of round (You & Xu 2005). These skull were recovered from the Yixian Formation of Liaoning China, which is famous for the exceptional preservation of its fossils, including most of the known feathered dinosaurs

Feathered dinosaurs

The realization that dinosaurs are closely related to birds raised the obvious possibility of feathered dinosaurs. Fossils of Archaeopteryx include well-preserved feathers, but it was not until the early 1990s that clearly nonavian dinosaur fossils were discovered with preserved feathers....
. The age of this formation has been disputed, but recently radiometric dating

Radiometric dating

Radiometric dating is a technique used to date materials, usually based on a comparison between the observed abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates....
has confirmed an Early Cretaceous

Early Cretaceous

The Early Cretaceous or the Lower Cretaceous , is the earlier of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous Period . It began about 146 million years ago....
age, probably in the Barremian

Barremian

The Barremian faunal stage was a period of geological time between 130.0 ? 1.5 mya and 125.0 ? 1.0 mya). It is considered to be of the Early Cretaceous epoch , in which it constituted the earliest part of the obsolete Gallic epoch....
stage (130 to 125 million years ago). Several specimens of Psittacosaurus have also been recovered from the Yixian, including one with a row of long bristles on the tail which may have had a display

Animal communication

Animal communication is any behaviour on the part of one animal that has an effect on the current or future behaviour of another animal. The study of animal communication, sometimes called zoosemiotics has played an important part in the development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of animal cognition....
function in life. As Hongshanosaurus is known only from skull material, it is unknown whether it also had these bristles.

Classification

Hongshanosaurus was placed in the family Psittacosauridae when it was first described, but has not been included in any phylogenetic analysis since. The only other genus currently classified in this family is Psittacosaurus itself, although that genus includes up to a dozen individual species. Psittacosaurids are extremely basal

Basal (phylogenetics)

In phylogenetics, a basal clade is the earliest clade to branch in a larger clade; it appears at the base of a cladogram.A basal group form an outgroup to the rest of the clade, such as in the following example:...
ceratopsians. The more inclusive group Neoceratopsia

Ceratopsia

Ceratopsia or Ceratopia is a group of herbivore, beaked dinosaurs which thrived in what are now North America and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period , although ancestral forms lived earlier, in the Jurassic....
is in fact defined to include all ceratopsians more derived

Derived

In phylogenetics, a trait is derived if it is present in an organism, but was absent in the last common ancestor of the group being considered. This may also refer to structures that are not present in an organism, but were present in its ancestors, i.e. traits that have undergone secondary loss....
than Psittacosauridae (You & Dodson 2004).