Leptoceratopsidae

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Leptoceratopsids
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 83.5–66  Ma
Leptoceratopsidae Diversity.jpg
Montage of three leptoceratopsids, clockwise from top left: Prenoceratops , Montanoceratops and Leptoceratops .
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Clade: Ornithischia
Suborder: Ceratopsia
Clade: Euceratopsia
Family: Leptoceratopsidae
Nopcsa, 1923
Type species
Leptoceratops gracilis
Brown, 1914
Genera

Leptoceratopsidae is an extinct family of neoceratopsian dinosaurs from Asia, North America and Europe. Leptoceratopsids resembled, and were closely related to, other neoceratopsians, such as the families Protoceratopsidae and Ceratopsidae, but they were more primitive and generally smaller.

Contents

Phylogeny

Leptoceratopsidae was originally named by Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás in 1923 as a subfamily Leptoceratopsinae, and its type species is Leptoceratops gracilis . Mackovicky, in 2001, defined it as a stem-based taxon and a family consisting of Leptoceratops gracilis and all species closer to Leptoceratops than to Triceratops horridus . [1] The cladogram below represents the results of the phylogenetic analyses performed by He et al. (2015) in their description of Ischioceratops . [2]

Ceratopsia

Yinlong

Chaoyangsaurus

Xuanhuaceratops

Psittacosaurus spp.

Neoceratopsia

Liaoceratops

Aquilops

Yamaceratops

Auroraceratops

Archaeoceratops

Helioceratops

Koreaceratops

Leptoceratopsidae

Asiaceratops

Cerasinops

Ischioceratops

Montanoceratops

Prenoceratops

Leptoceratops

Udanoceratops

Zhuchengceratops

Gryphoceratops

Unescoceratops

Coronosauria

Graciliceratops

Protoceratops

Bagaceratops

Ajkaceratops

Ceratopsidae

Palaeobiogeography

Life reconstruction of a leptoceratopsid Ferrisaurus.jpg
Life reconstruction of a leptoceratopsid

Definitive leptoceratopsids have so far been found exclusively in the Late Cretaceous period (late Santonian - late Maastrichtian stages) of Asia and Western North America; [2] however, material referred to leptoceratopsids from the early Campanian of North Carolina and Sweden extends their geographic range into Eastern North America and Europe. [3] A possible leptoceratopsid ulna, named Serendipaceratops , has been found in Victoria, Australia. However, a 2010 study showed that it could not be confidently referred to any ornithischian family, and is considered a nomen dubium . [4]

Leptoceratopsids range in age from Gryphoceratops , of the late Santonian, to Leptoceratops , right at the end of the Cretaceous in the late Maastrichtian. Gryphoceratops is the first definitive record of Santonian leptoceratopsid. It was named based on a partial left dentary from Alberta, Canada. Gryphoceratops represents the oldest known leptoceratopsid and probably the smallest adult ceratopsian known from North America. [2]

Leptoceratopsids are known from Eastern North America by a partial maxilla dated to the early Campanian of North Carolina, whilst the European material referred to Leptoceratopsidae consists of isolated teeth and vertebrae from the early Campanian of Sweden. The former represents the first known ceratopsian from Eastern North America, and its specialised maxillary anatomy supports the hypothesis that Appalachia was isolated from Western Europe and Laramidia for an extended period during the Late Cretaceous, resulting in an endemic Late Cretaceous fauna. [3] The shared presence of leptoceratopsids in Appalachia and Western Europe has implications for their biogeographic dispersal, suggesting the possibility that leptoceratopsids entered Appalachia through either Western Europe or Laramidia; however, it is also possible that the European leptoceratopsids also represented a distinct endemic assemblage, as the Fennoscandian Shield was also an isolated landmass during the Late Cretaceous. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ceratopsia</span> Extinct suborder of Dinosaurs

Ceratopsia or Ceratopia is a group of herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs that thrived in what are now North America, Europe, and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period, although ancestral forms lived earlier, in the Jurassic. The earliest known ceratopsian, Yinlong downsi, lived between 161.2 and 155.7 million years ago. The last ceratopsian species, Triceratops prorsus, became extinct during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, 66 million years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip J. Currie</span> Canadian paleontologist and curator

Philip John Currie is a Canadian palaeontologist and museum curator who helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta and is now a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In the 1980s, he became the director of the Canada-China Dinosaur Project, the first cooperative palaeontological partnering between China and the West since the Central Asiatic Expeditions in the 1920s, and helped describe some of the first feathered dinosaurs. He is one of the primary editors of the influential Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, and his areas of expertise include theropods, the origin of birds, and dinosaurian migration patterns and herding behavior. He was one of the models for palaeontologist Alan Grant in the film Jurassic Park.

<i>Leptoceratops</i> Extinct genus of ceratopsian dinosaur

Leptoceratops, is a genus of leptoceratopsid ceratopsian dinosaurs from the late Cretaceous Period of what is now Western North America. Their skulls have been found in Alberta, Canada and Wyoming.

<i>Montanoceratops</i> Extinct genus of dinosaurs

Montanoceratops is an extinct genus of small ceratopsian dinosaur that lived approximately 70 million years ago during the latter part of the Cretaceous Period in what is now Montana and Alberta. Montanoceratops was a small sized, moderately-built, ground-dwelling, quadrupedal herbivore, that could grow up to an estimated 2.5 m (8.2 ft) in length and 170 kg (370 lb) in body mass.

Asiaceratops is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur. It lived during the Early-Late Cretaceous. The type species, A. salsopaludalis is known from Uzbekistan, while A. sulcidens is known from China and Mongolia.

<i>Udanoceratops</i> Leptoceratopsid dinosaur genus from the Late Cretaceous

Udanoceratops is a genus of large leptoceratopsid dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period of Mongolia, in what is now the Djadokhta Formation.

<i>Prenoceratops</i> Genus of reptiles (fossil)

Prenoceratops, is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period. It was a relatively small dinosaur, reaching 1.3 m (4.3 ft) in length and 20 kg (44 lb) in body mass. Its fossils have been found in the upper Two Medicine Formation in the present-day U.S. state of Montana, in Campanian age rock layers that have been dated to 74.3 million years ago. Fossils were also found in the Oldman Formation in the modern day Canadian province of Alberta, dating to around 77 million years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horseshoe Canyon Formation</span> Geological formation in Canada

The Horseshoe Canyon Formation is a stratigraphic unit of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in southwestern Alberta. It takes its name from Horseshoe Canyon, an area of badlands near Drumheller.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chaoyangsauridae</span> Family of ceratopsian dinosaurs

Chaoyangsauridae is a family of ceratopsian dinosaurs. They are among the earliest known marginocephalian dinosaurs, with remains dating to about 160 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic period. Members of this group had sharp beaks for snipping off leaves to eat, and a very small frill.

<i>Cerasinops</i> Extinct genus of dinosaurs

Cerasinops was a small ceratopsian dinosaur. It lived during the Campanian of the late Cretaceous Period. Its fossils have been found in Two Medicine Formation, in Montana. The type species of the genus Cerasinops is C. hodgskissi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wangshi Group</span>

The Wangshi Group is a geological Group in Shandong, China whose strata date back to the Coniacian to Campanian stages of the Late Cretaceous. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appalachia (landmass)</span> Mesozoic land mass separated from Laramidia to the west by the Western Interior Seaway

During most of the Late Cretaceous the eastern half of North America formed Appalachia, an island land mass separated from Laramidia to the west by the Western Interior Seaway. This seaway had split North America into two massive landmasses due to a multitude of factors such as tectonism and sea-level fluctuations for nearly 40 million years. The seaway eventually expanded, divided across the Dakotas, and by the end of the Cretaceous, it retreated towards the Gulf of Mexico and the Hudson Bay. This left the island masses joined in the continent of North America as the Rocky Mountains rose. From the Cenomanian to the end of the Campanian ages of the Late Cretaceous, Appalachia was separated from the rest of North America. As the Western Interior Seaway retreated in the Maastrichtian, Laramidia and Appalachia eventually connected. Because of this, its fauna was isolated, and developed very differently from the tyrannosaur, ceratopsian, hadrosaurid, pachycephalosaur and ankylosaurid dominated fauna of the western part of North America, known as "Laramidia".

<i>Zhuchengceratops</i> Extinct genus of reptiles

Zhuchengceratops is a genus of extinct leptoceratopsid ceratopsian that lived during the Upper Cretaceous of modern-day China. It was first described in 2010, by Xu et al., who created the binomial Zhuchengceratops inexpectus. The name is derived from the location of Zhucheng, the Latinized-Greek ceratops, or "horned face", and the unexpected articulated nature of the holotype. The skeleton was found in the Wangshi Group, which is of Late Cretaceous age, and most fossils are only disarticulated bones of Shantungosaurus.

Unescoceratops is a genus of leptoceratopsid ceratopsian dinosaurs known from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, southern Canada. It contains a single species, Unescoceratops koppelhusae.

<i>Gryphoceratops</i> Genus of reptiles (fossil)

Gryphoceratops is an extinct genus of leptoceratopsid ceratopsian dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, southern Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of ceratopsian research</span>

This timeline of ceratopsian research is a chronological listing of events in the history of paleontology focused on the ceratopsians, a group of herbivorous marginocephalian dinosaurs that evolved parrot-like beaks, bony frills, and, later, spectacular horns. The first scientifically documented ceratopsian fossils were described by Edward Drinker Cope starting in the 1870s; however, the remains were poorly preserved and their true nature was not recognized. Over the next several decades, Cope named several such genera and species. Cope's hated rival, Othniel Charles Marsh, also described ceratopsian remains. In 1887, Marsh mistook a Triceratops horn for one belonging to a new species of prehistoric Bison. Marsh also named the eponymous genus Ceratops in 1888. The next year, he named the most famous ceratopsian, Triceratops horridus. It was the discovery of Triceratops that illuminated the ceratopsian body plan, and he formally named the Ceratopsia in 1890.

<i>Ischioceratops</i> Extinct genus of dinosaurs

Ischioceratops is an extinct genus of small herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur that lived approximately 69 million years ago during the latter part of the Cretaceous Period in what is now China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kristianstad Basin</span> Cretaceous geological formation in Skåne, Sweden

The Kristianstad Basin is a Cretaceous-age structural basin and geological formation in northeastern Skåne, the southernmost province of Sweden. The basin extends from Hanöbukten, a bay in the Baltic Sea, in the east to the town of Hässleholm in the west and ends with the two horsts Linderödsåsen and Nävlingeåsen in the south. The basin's northern boundary is more diffuse and there are several outlying portions of Cretaceous-age sediments. During the Cretaceous, the region was a shallow subtropical to temperate inland sea and archipelago.

Sinankylosaurus is a genus of dinosaur, originally described as an ankylosaur, from the Late Cretaceous Hongtuya Formation of Shandong, China. The genus contains a single species, Sinankylosaurus zhuchengensis, known from a nearly complete right ilium. The describers claim that the discovery of Sinankylosaurus further demonstrates the similarity between dinosaurs of eastern Asia and western North America.

References

  1. Makovicky, P.J. 2001. A Montanoceratops cerorhynchus (Dinosauria: Ceratopsia) braincase from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, In: Tanke, D.H. & Carpenter, K. (Eds.). Mesozoic Vertebrate Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pp. 243-262.
  2. 1 2 3 Yiming He; Peter J. Makovicky; Kebai Wang; Shuqing Chen; Corwin Sullivan; Fenglu Han; Xing XuMichael J. Ryan; David C. Evans; Philip J. Currie; Caleb M. Brown; Don Brinkman (2015). "A New Leptoceratopsid (Ornithischia, Ceratopsia) with a Unique Ischium from the Upper Cretaceous of Shandong Province, China". PLOS ONE. 10 (12): e0144148. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1044148H. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144148 . PMC   4689537 . PMID   26701114.
  3. 1 2 Nicholas R. Longrich (2015). "A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of eastern North America, and implications for dinosaur biogeography". Cretaceous Research. 57: 199–207. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2015.08.004.
  4. Agnolin, F.L., Ezcurra, M.D., Pais, D.F. and Salisbury, S.W. (2010). "A reappraisal of the Cretaceous non-avian dinosaur faunas from Australia and New Zealand: Evidence for their Gondwanan affinities." Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 8(2): 257-300.
  5. Lindgren, Johan; Currie, Philip J.; Siverson, Mikael; Rees, Jan; Cederström, Peter; Lindgren, Filip (2007). "The First Neoceratopsian Dinosaur Remains From Europe" (PDF). Palaeontology. 50 (4): 929–937. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2007.00690.x. S2CID   129733977.