Pentaceratops

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Pentaceratops

Pentaceratops 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 ceratopsid

Ceratopsidae

Ceratopsidae is a speciose group of marginocephalian dinosaurs including Triceratops and Styracosaurus. All known species were quadrupedal herbivores from the Upper Cretaceous of Western North America and are characterized by beaks, rows of shearing teeth in the back of the jaw, and elaborate horns and frills....
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 late Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide, is a geologic period from circa to million years ago . In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows on the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period....
Period of what is now North America

North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
. Its name means "five-horned face", derived from 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....
"penta/p??ta" meaning 'five', "ceras/???a?" meaning 'horn' and "-ops/??" meaning 'face', in reference to its two long epijugal bones, spikes which protrude out sidewards from under its eyes, in addition to the three more obvious horns.

Pentaceratops lived around 75-73 million years ago, its remains having been mostly found in the Kirtland Formation

Kirtland Formation

The Kirtland Formation is a Sedimentary rock geological formation. It is the product of alluvial muds and overbank sand deposits from the many channels draining the coastal plain that existed on the inland seashore of North America, in the late Cretaceous period....
in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico

New Mexico

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Encyclopedia

Pentaceratops is a genus

Genus

Ceratopsidae

Dinosaur

Cretaceous

North America

Ancient Greek

Kirtland Formation

New Mexico

New Mexico is a U. S. State located in the Southwestern United States of the United States. Inhabited by Native Americans in the United States populations for many centuries, it has also has been part of the Spanish Empire viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S....
. Other dinosaurs which shared its time period include Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus
Parasaurolophus

Parasaurolophus is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now North America, about 76-73 million years ago....
, the pachycephalosaur Prenocephale
Prenocephale

Prenocephale was a small pachycephalosaurid dinosaur genus from the Late Cretaceous and was similar in many ways to its close relative, Homalocephale....
, the armored dinosaur Nodocephalosaurus
Nodocephalosaurus

Nodocephalosaurus is an ankylosaurid ankylosaur from New Mexico. The holotype was recovered from the Upper Cretaceous De-na-zin Member of the Kirtland Formation and consists of an incomplete skull....
and possibly the tyrannosaurid Daspletosaurus
Daspletosaurus

Daspletosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America between 80 and 73 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period ....
.

It was about 8 m (27 ft) long, and has been estimated to have weighed around 5,500 kg (13,000 lb).

Discoveries and species

The first examples were collected by C. H. Sternberg

Charles Hazelius Sternberg

Charles Hazelius Sternberg , was an United States fossil collector and amateur paleontology. His older brother, Dr. George M. Sternberg was a military surgeon assigned to Fort Harker near Ellsworth, Kansas and brought the rest of Sternberg family to Kansas to live on his ranch about 1868....
in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico

New Mexico

Henry Fairfield Osborn

Henry Fairfield Osborn was an United States geologist, paleontologist, and Eugenics, "a first-rate science administrator and a third-rate scientist."...
in 1923, who obligingly gave it the specific name sternbergii after its discoverer. The frill of Pentaceratops is larger than that of Triceratops
Triceratops

Triceratops is an extinct genus of herbivore Ceratopsidae dinosaur which lived during the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period , around 68 to 65 mya in what is now North America....
, with two large holes (fenestrae

Fenestrae

Fenestr? also from the Latin for window,are small pores in epithelial cells to allow for rapid exchange of molecules between blood vessels and surrounding tissue....
) in it. In 1930, Carl Wiman

Carl Wiman

Carl Wiman was a Swedish people paleontologist and the first professor of paleontology at Uppsala University. He published on a variety of topics, including extinct penguins, and dinosaur fossils sent to Sweden from People's Republic of China and the San Juan Basin of New Mexico ....
described a second species of Pentaceratops, P. fenestratus, but this was later determined to be the same species as the original finds. Further material discovered in Colorado

Colorado

The State of Colorado is a U.S. state located in the Mountain States of the United States of America. Colorado may also be considered to be a part of the Western United States and Southwestern United States regions of the United States....
has been identified as Pentaceratops in 2006.

Pentaceratops species

P. sternbergii

Pentaceratops has the distinction of having produced the largest known 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....
for a land vertebrate

Vertebrate

Vertebrates are members of the subphylum Vertebrata, chordates with Vertebras or Vertebral columns. The grouping sometimes includes the hagfish, which have no vertebrae, but are genetically quite closely related to lampreys, which do have vertebrae....
. That skull and its associated skeleton

Skeleton

In biology, a skeleton is a rigid framework that provides protection and structure in many types of animal, particularly those of the phylum Chordata and of the superphylum Ecdysozoa....
are on display at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum in Norman, Oklahoma, operated by the University of Oklahoma. It is currently housed in a building on Chautauqua Avenue that opened on May 1, 2000....
. The skeleton was found in New Mexico

New Mexico

Classification

Within the Ceratopsia

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....
, Pentaceratops belonged to the subfamily Ceratopsinae and appears to be most closely related to Anchiceratops
Anchiceratops

Anchiceratops is a genus of chasmosaurinae ceratopsid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of western North America. Like other ceratopsids, it was a quadrupedal herbivore with three horns on its face, a parrot-like beak, and a long frill extending from the back of its head....
and the earlier genus Chasmosaurus
Chasmosaurus

Chasmosaurus is a genus of Ceratopsidae dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Period of North America. Its name means 'opening lizard', referring to the large openings in its frill ....
. It may have been a close relative to the ancestor of Torosaurus
Torosaurus

Torosaurus was a genus of Ceratopsidae dinosaur. It had one of the largest skulls of any land animal known, reaching 2.6 metre in length....
, which lived a few million years later, right at the end of the Cretaceous period, when all ceratopsians died out.

Diet

Pentaceratops, like all ceratopsians, was an 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....
. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", and 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.

External links

at Dino Russ' Lair