Auroraceratops

Auroraceratops, meaning "dawn horned face", is a genus of bipedal basal neoceratopsian dinosaur, from the Early Cretaceous (Aptian age) of north central China. The etymology of the generic name refers to its status as an early ceratopsian and also to Dawn Dodson, wife of Peter Dodson, one of the palaeontologists who described it.

==Discovery and species== Expeditions into the Gansu Province of northwestern China began with the Sino-Swedish Expedition of 1930 to 1931, where discoveries of dinosaurs including the now-dubious early ceratopsian Microceratops sulcidens. These discoveries were followed by occasional observations of dinosaur bones in the Houhongquan Basin in the 1960s, and then the Gongpoquan Basin in 1986. Such observations led to the China-Canada Dinosaur Project taking a reconnaissance trip to the Gongpoquan Basin in 1988, but no further expeditions were led until the Sino-Japanese Silk Road Dinosaur Expedition of 1992 and 1993, led by Chinese paleontology Dong Zhiming of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) and Japanese paleontologst Yoichi Azuma of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum (FPDM). The Sino-Japanese Dinosaur Project discovered the new early ceratopsian Archaeoceratops, based on a skull and two partial skeletons, as well as many of the unique genera that form the Mazongshan Dinosaur Fauna of the Early Cretaceous of Gansu. Collaborations on the paleontology of the Mazongshan area continued with the Sino-American Mazongshan Dinosaur Project of 1997 to 2000, where the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the IVPP collaborated. The Sino-American Dinosaur Project noticed the Yujingzi Basin in 1999 as a potential dinosaur-bearing locality, with the first dinosaur fossils discovered in 2000 by team members including Chinese paleontologist You Hailu of the Institute of Geology of Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (CAGS). You began collaborations with Chinese paleontologist Li Daqing of the Fossil Research and Development Center (FRDC) of Gansu Province in 2004, beginning excavations in the Yujingzi Basin and continuing those in the Gongpoquan Basin.