Spaniel-size

Spaniel-size Triceratops cousin walked on its two hind legs

By Laura Geggel
Published December 14, 2015
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An artist's interpretation of Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis, a dinosaur
that lived about 160 million years ago. (Credit: Portia Sloan Rollings)

An artist's interpretation of Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis, a dinosaur
that lived about 160 million years ago. (Credit: Portia Sloan Rollings)

The discovery of a spaniel-size ceratopsian that walked on its two hind
legs reveals that Late Jurassic horned dinosaurs were much more diverse
than previously thought, a new study finds.

Researchers uncovered the remains of the 160-million-year-old,
plant-eating creature in [178]China's Gobi desert. The new specimen has
a unique ornamental texture on its skull, and it's much smaller than
its famous distant cousin, [179]Triceratops, which lived about 95
million years later in North America during the Late Cretaceous, the
researchers said.

Though its anatomy suggests the newfound beast was an early horned
dinosaur, it didn't sport any horns. That's no surprise â€" other early
horned dinosaurs, including the small bipedal Yinlong downsi, which the
researchers found in the same Gobi desert fossil bed, didn't have
horns, either, the researchers said. [[180]Photos: Oldest Known Horned
Dinosaur in North America]

"It looks like Yinlong downsi, but much larger," said study lead author
Fenglu Han, a postdoctoral student in the School of Earth Sciences at
the China University of Geosciences. "Most of the skull bones [of the
new species] are sculpted."

After analyzing the fossils â€" a partial skull and foot â€" the
researchers named the newly identified species Hualianceratops
wucaiwanensis (HWAL-ee-on SAR-ah-tops woo-sigh-wahn-EN-sis). In
Mandarin, Hualian means "ornamental face," referring to the unique
texture on its skull, and [181]ceratops means "horned face" in Greek.
The wucaiwan part of the species name refers to the area in which the
fossil was discovered, and means "five color bay" in Mandarin.

When the researchers uncovered H. wucaiwanensis in 2002, they initially
thought it was an [182]ankylosaur, Han told Live Science. But a
detailed study confirmed that, like Yinlong downsi, the newfound plant
eater is among the oldest ceratopsians known to science, he said.

"Finding these two species in the same fossil beds reveals there was
more diversity there than we previously recognized," study co-author
Catherine Forster, a professor of biology at The George Washington
University in Washington, D.C., [183]said in a statement. "It suggests
that the ceratopsian dinosaurs already had diversified into at least
four lineages by the beginning of the Jurassic period."

A comparison of H. wucaiwanensis with other ceratopsians is helping
researchers reassess the pace and pattern of horned-dinosaur evolution,
the researchers said. For instance, little is known about the evolution
of the small, parrot-beaked horned dinosaur group Psittacosaurus, which
lived in China during the Early Cretaceous.

"Hualianceratops preserved some derived features of Psittacosaurus, and
may provide more information of the origin of Psittacosaurus," Han
said.

Moreover, H. wucaiwanensis lived at the same time and place as
Guanlong, an early relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. It's possible that
Guanlong hunted H. wucaiwanensis, but more evidence is needed to say
for sure, Han said.

The new study is "an exciting paper," said Caleb Brown, a
Source .... : http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/12/14/spaniel-size-triceratops-cousin-walked-on-its-two-hind-legs.html
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