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Pentaceratops
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Pentaceratops

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Pentaceratops ("five-horned face") is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period of what is now North America. Fossils of this animal were first discovered in 1921, but the genus was named in 1923 when its type species, Pentaceratops sternbergii, was described. Pentaceratops lived around 76–73 million years ago, its remains having been mostly found in the Kirtland Formation in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico. Another species, P. aquilonius, was named by Nick W. Longrich in 2014, but it is debated if it belongs to that genus or a separate taxon. About a dozen sk

Wikidata facts

Parent taxon
Chasmosaurinae
Image
Titanoceratops dinosaur.png
Length
6.8
Show 8 more facts
taxon name
Pentaceratops
Commons category
Pentaceratops
taxon rank
genus
start time
76000000-0
end time
73000000-0
time period
Late Cretaceous
location of discovery
United States
main food source
herbivore
Sources (3)

via Wikidata · CC0

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Encyclopedic overview

9 sections
Contents
  • Discoveries and species
  • Description
  • Classification
  • Paleobiology
  • Paleoecology
  • See also
  • References
  • Sources
  • External links

Pentaceratops ("five-horned face") is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period of what is now North America. Fossils of this animal were first discovered in 1921, but the genus was named in 1923 when its type species, Pentaceratops sternbergii, was described. Pentaceratops lived around 76–73 million years ago, its remains having been mostly found in the Kirtland Formation in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico. Another species, P. aquilonius, was named by Nick W. Longrich in 2014, but it is debated if it belongs to that genus or a separate taxon. About a dozen skulls and skeletons have been uncovered, so anatomical understanding of Pentaceratops is fairly complete. One exceptionally large specimen later became its own genus, Titanoceratops, due to its more derived morphology, similarities to Triceratops, and lack of unique characteristics shared with Pentaceratops.

Pentaceratops was about long, and has been estimated to have weighed around . It had a short nose horn, two long brow horns, and long horns on the jugal bones. Its skull had a very long frill with triangular hornlets on the edge.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Pentaceratops” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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