Zuniceratops

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Zuniceratops

Zuniceratops ('Zuni

Zuni

The Zuni or A:shiwi are a Native Americans in the United States tribe, one of the Pueblo peoples, most of whom live in the Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico on the Zuni River, a tributary of the Little Colorado River, in western New Mexico, United States....
-horned face') was a 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....
n 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 mid Turonian

Turonian

The Turonian is a faunal stage of the Late Cretaceous epoch . It spans the time between 93.5 ? 0.8 annum and 89.3 ? 1 Ma .The Turonien was definied by the French paleontologist Alcide d'Orbigny , who named it after the city of Tours in the French department of Indre-et-Loire....
of 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 New Mexico

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....
, United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
. It lived about 10 million years earlier than the more familiar horned Ceratopsidae

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....
and provides an important window on their ancestry.

Zuniceratops appears to have been roughly 3 to 3.5 meters

Metre

The metre or meter is a Unit of measurement of length. It is the SI base unit of length in the metric system and in the International System of Units , used around the world for general and scientific purposes....
long (10-11 ft) and three feet (one meter) tall at the hips. It probably weighed 100 to 150 kilogram

Kilogram

The kilogram or kilogrammeThe spelling kilogram is used by the International Committee for Weights and Measures and the U.S....
s (200 to 250 lb

Pound (mass)

The pound or pound-mass is a Units of measurement of massused in the Imperial unit, United States customary units and other systems of measurement....
).

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Encyclopedia

Zuniceratops ('Zuni

Zuni

Ceratopsia

Dinosaur

Turonian

Cretaceous

New Mexico

United States

Ceratopsidae

Metre

Kilogram

The kilogram or kilogrammeThe spelling kilogram is used by the International Committee for Weights and Measures and the U.S....
s (200 to 250 lb

Pound (mass)

The pound or pound-mass is a Units of measurement of massused in the Imperial unit, United States customary units and other systems of measurement....
). The frill

Neck frill

Neck frill is the popular term for the relatively extense margin seen on the back of the heads of reptiles with either a bone support such as those present on the skulls of dinosaurs of the suborder Marginocephalia or a cartilage one as in the Frill-necked Lizard....
behind its head was fenestrated but lacking epoccipital

Epoccipital

Epoccipital is an anatomy term for the distinctive bones found lining the neck frill of ceratopsid dinosaurs. The name is a misnomer, as they are not associated with the occipital bone....
s. It is the earliest-known ceratopsian to have eyebrow horns and the oldest-known ceratopsian from 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....
. This set of horns is thought to have grown much larger with age.

Discovery and Species

Zuniceratops was discovered in 1996, by 8 year old Christopher James Wolfe, son of paleontologist

Paleontology

File:Geological time spiral - sharper.pngPaleontology from Greek: pa?a??? "old, ancient", ??, ??t- "being, creature", and ????? "speech, thought" is the study of prehistory life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments ....
Douglas G. Wolfe, in the Moreno Hill Formation

Moreno Hill Formation

The is a geological Formation in New Mexico whose strata date back to the Late Cretaceous. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation....
in west-central New Mexico. One skull and the bones from several individuals have been found. More recently, one bone, believed to be a squamosal

Squamosal

The squamosal is a bone of the head of higher vertebrates. It is the principal component of the cheek region in the skull, lying below the temporal series and otic notch and bounded anteriorly by postorbital....
, has since been found to be an ischium of a Nothronychus
Nothronychus

Nothronychus is a genus of dinosaur classified in the group Therizinosauria, strange theropods with a toothless beak, a bird-like hip and four-toed feet, with all four toes facing forward....
.

Classification

Zuniceratops is an example of the evolutionary transition between early ceratopsians such as Protoceratops
Protoceratops

Protoceratops is a genus of sheep-sized Herbivore ceratopsian dinosaur, from the Upper Cretaceous Period of what is now Mongolia. It was a member of the Protoceratopsidae, a group of early horned dinosaurs....
and the later, larger ceratopsians that had very large horns and frills. This supports the theory that the lineage of ceratopsian dinosaurs may have been 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....
n in origin.

Although the first specimen discovered had single-rooted teeth (unusual for ceratopsians), later fossils had double-rooted teeth. This is evidence that the teeth became double-rooted with age. Zuniceratops was a 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....
like other ceratopsians and was probably a herd animal as well.

Zuniceratops in popular culture

Zuniceratops is featured in the Discovery Channel

Discovery Channel

The Discovery Channel is an United States satellite and cable TV channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications....
Special, When Dinosaurs Roamed America
When Dinosaurs Roamed America

When Dinosaurs Roamed America is a two-hour American television program that first aired on Discovery Channel in 2001. It was directed by Pierre de Lespinois and narrated by actor John Goodman....
.

External links

at Dino Russ's Lair