Dino card No. 0432 of 2,015

Colepiocephale

Say it: ko-LEP-ee-oh-SEF-uh-lee

Name means: “knucklehead”1

Ate: PlantsDome-headsLate Cretaceous

Colepiocephale was a small dome-headed dinosaur that lived in what is now Canada. It had a thick, bony dome on its skull that looked like a knuckle, and it used its head for head-butting fights with other dinosaurs.1

Lived

84 to 72 million years ago2

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alberta, Canada, and Montana, USA1

Food

Plants2

Length

2 to 3 m1

estimated

Artist's life restoration of Colepiocephale — How Colepiocephale may have looked, by Cesar Diaz. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Colepiocephale means 'knucklehead' because its dome looked like a curled-up knuckle.1

It was one of the oldest dome-headed dinosaurs in North America, living about 80 million years ago.1

The first fossil was a partial skull found in 1923 by E.J. Whitaker along the South Saskatchewan River.1

Scientists once thought it was a species of Stegoceras, but later gave it its own name in 2003.1

All the fossils found in the Foremost Formation belong to Colepiocephale, meaning it was the only dome-headed dinosaur there at that time.1

Its dome was made of solid bone, and it may have used it to ram rivals or show off to mates.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Colepiocephale
Named by: Sullivan 20032
Group: Dome-heads
Family / clade: Pachycephalosauridae2
Classification: Ornithischia > Pachycephalosauria2
Age of the rocks: 84 to 72 million years (Campanian)2
Rock formations: Foremost2
Countries: Canada2
Fossil records: 4 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: The first fossil, a partial skull, was collected in 1923 by E.J. Whitaker in Alberta, Canada. It was named Stegoceras lambei in 1945 by Charles Mortram Sternberg, and later renamed Colepiocephale by Robert M. Sullivan in 2003.1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating whether some fossils from the Judith River Formation in Montana belong to Colepiocephale or to another dome-headed dinosaur.1

Where the facts come from

Colepiocephale (en.wikipedia.org)
Colepiocephale in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.