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Ischioceratops

Say it: ISS-kee-oh-SEH-rah-tops

Name means: “ischium horn face, referring to the unique shape of its hip bone”1

Ate: PlantsHorned dinosLate Cretaceous

Ischioceratops was a small, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now China. It had a short frill on its head and no horns, unlike its bigger cousin Triceratops. Its most unusual feature was a hip bone shaped like a bow and arrow.1

Lived

84 to 72 million years ago4

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Kugou, Zhucheng, Shandong Province, China1

Food

Plants2 1

Length

2 m3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 4 house cats nose to tailas long as 11 bananas end to end

How big was Ischioceratops compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Ischioceratops is known only from a partial skeleton that includes the pelvis, tail bones, and parts of the legs. No skull has been found yet.1

Its ischium (a hip bone) is unlike any other dinosaur's. It flares out in the middle like a recurve bow and has a hole called a fenestra, ending in an axehead-shaped tip.1

Ischioceratops lived during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, about 83 to 72 million years ago.2

It was a leptoceratopsid, a group of small, hornless, frilled dinosaurs that walked on four legs. Leptoceratopsids are close relatives of the larger horned dinosaurs like Triceratops.1

The fossil was found in the same bonebed as many hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) bones and a tyrannosaur, suggesting a rich ecosystem.1

Ischioceratops had nine sacral vertebrae (hip vertebrae), more than any other known leptoceratopsid.1

AI-made picture of Ischioceratops — An AI-made picture of how Ischioceratops might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Ischioceratops
Named by: He et al. 20154
Group: Horned dinos
Family / clade: Leptoceratopsidae4
Classification: Ornithischia > Ceratopsia4
Age of the rocks: 84 to 72 million years (Campanian)4
Rock formations: Hongtuya4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Ischioceratops was named in 2015 by a team of scientists including He Y., Makovicky P.J., and others. The only specimen was dug up from the Kugou locality in Zhucheng, China, and is stored at the Zhucheng Dinosaur Museum.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure what the strange shape of its ischium was used for. It might have been for muscle attachment or display, but no one knows for certain.1

Where the facts come from

A New Leptoceratopsid (Ornithischia, Ceratopsia) with a Unique Ischium from the Upper Cretaceous of Shandong Province, China | PLOS One (journals.plos.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Ischioceratops (en.wikipedia.org)
Ischioceratops 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.

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