Bainoceratops

Bainoceratops
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Superorder:	Dinosauria
Order:	Ornithischia
Infraorder:	Ceratopsia
Family:	Leptoceratopsidae?
Genus:	Bainoceratops
Binomial name
Bainoceratops efremovi Tereschenko & Alifanov, 2003

Bainoceratops (Bain: mountain, keras: horn, ops: face) was a genus of dinosaur from the late Campanian in the Late Cretaceous. It was a ceratopsian first described by Tereschenko and Alifanov in 2003. Its fossils were found in southern Mongolia.

Classification

Bainoceratops belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is Greek for "horned face"), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period, which ended roughly 66 million years ago.

Unfortunately, Bainoceratops is only known from a vertebral column. This is enough to distinguish it from Protoceratops and show that it is more closely related to Udanoceratops tschizhovi

Diet

Bainoceratops, like all ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", and so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles.

See also

• Timeline of ceratopsian research

References

• Tereschenko, VS & Alifanov, VR (2003). "Bainoceratops efremovi, a new protoceratopid dinosaur (Protoceratopidae, Neoceratopsia) from the Bain-Dzak Locality (South Mongolia)". Paleontological Journal. 37 (3): 293–302.

External links

• http://www.ntux.at/simonkrauter/newdinorama/dinos/b/bainoceratops/daten.htm (in German)
• Ceratopsia at Thescelosaurus!