Liaoceratops
Liaoceratops was a small, early horned dinosaur that lived in what is now China. It had a beak like a parrot and a small frill on its head, but no big horns yet. This little plant-eater helps scientists understand how later horned dinosaurs like Triceratops evolved.21
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Fun facts
Liaoceratops is one of the oldest and most primitive neoceratopsians, meaning it was an early relative of horned dinosaurs like Triceratops.2
Only two nearly complete skulls of Liaoceratops have been found, and one of them belonged to a juvenile.12
It lived about 127 to 121 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period.1
Liaoceratops had a small frill at the back of its skull, but it did not have the large horns that later ceratopsians had.2
Its name comes from Liaoning, the province in China where its fossils were discovered.1
Scientists think Liaoceratops shows that some features of later horned dinosaurs evolved piece by piece, not all at once.2
Most asked questions about Liaoceratops
?How big was Liaoceratops?
About 50 centimetres (1.6 feet) long and weighed around 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds). That is about the size of a small cat.3
?What did Liaoceratops eat?
It was a plant eater. It fed on low-growing plants like ferns and cycads.3
?Did Liaoceratops have feathers?
The sources do not say whether Liaoceratops had feathers. It lived in the same area as feathered dinosaurs, but no feathers have been found on its fossils.3
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For dino experts
- Scientific name
- Liaoceratops
- Named by
- Xu et al. 20024
- Group
- Horned dinos
- Family / clade
- Neoceratopsia4
- Classification
- Ornithischia > Ceratopsia4
- Age of the rocks
- 126 to 120 million years (Barremian / Aptian)4
- Rock formations
- Yixian4
- Countries
- China4
- Fossil records
- 2 in the Paleobiology Database4
- Discovery
- Liaoceratops was named in 2002 by Xing Xu, Peter Makovicky, Xiao-lin Wang, Mark Norell, and Hai-lu You based on two skulls found in Liaoning, China.21
- Still debated
- Scientists are still debating exactly how Liaoceratops is related to other early ceratopsians and which features it passed on to later horned dinosaurs.2
Where the facts come from
- Liaoceratops | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)
- A ceratopsian dinosaur from China and the early evolution of Ceratopsia | Nature (nature.com)
- Liaoceratops (en.wikipedia.org)
- Liaoceratops in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.
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