Dino card No. 1929 of 2,027

Xenoceratops

Say it: ZEE-no-SER-uh-tops

Name means: “alien horned face”1

Ate: PlantsHorned dinosLate Cretaceous

Xenoceratops was an early horned dinosaur that lived in Canada about 78 million years ago. It had a big frill on its head with spikes and two long horns above its eyes, making it look a bit like an alien. It was one of the oldest large horned dinosaurs ever found in North America.1

Lived

84 to 72 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alberta, Canada, near the village of Foremost2

Food

Plants3

Length

6 m1

estimate

Weight

1.8 tonnes1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 1 cars

as long as 6 dogs nose to tailas long as 33 bananas end to endas heavy as 60 big dogsas heavy as 360 watermelons

How big was Xenoceratops compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Xenoceratops is the oldest known ceratopsid dinosaur from Canada, living about 78 million years ago.2

Its name means 'alien horned face' because it was found in rocks that had not yielded horned dinosaur fossils before.2

The fossils were collected in 1958 by paleontologist Wann Langston Jr., but they sat in a museum for decades before scientists realized they belonged to a new species.1

Unlike Triceratops, Xenoceratops had spikes on its frill in addition to the two long brow horns.1

Xenoceratops was about 6 metres long and weighed more than 2 tons, about as heavy as a large rhinoceros.1

It lived in a subtropical environment in Alberta, which at that time had no snow or frost.1

Scientists think Xenoceratops is the most primitive centrosaurine, meaning it branched off early in the evolution of this group of horned dinosaurs.2

AI-made picture of Xenoceratops — An AI-made picture of how Xenoceratops 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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Myth buster

Myth: Xenoceratops is just a small, unimportant dinosaur.

Truth: Xenoceratops is important because it is the oldest known large horned dinosaur from Canada, and it shows that horned dinosaurs evolved their fancy frills and horns very early.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Xenoceratops
Named by: Ryan et al. 20123
Group: Horned dinos
Family / clade: Ceratopsidae3
Classification: Ornithischia > Ceratopsia > Ceratopsidae3
Age of the rocks: 84 to 72 million years (Campanian)3
Rock formations: Foremost3
Countries: Canada3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Xenoceratops was named in 2012 by Michael Ryan and colleagues. The fossils were originally collected in 1958 by Wann Langston Jr. from a bone bed in the Foremost Formation of Alberta, Canada, and later rediscovered in the Canadian Museum of Nature.2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly what the complete skull of Xenoceratops looked like, because only parts of the frill and horns have been found.2

Where the facts come from

Two-Ton "Alien" Horned Dinosaur Found, "Different From Every Other" | National Geographic (nationalgeographic.com)
cdnsciencepub.com (cdnsciencepub.com)
Xenoceratops 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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