''Kulceratops'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

ceratopsian Ceratopsia or Ceratopia ( or ; Greek: "horned faces") is a group of herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs that thrived in what are now North America, Europe, and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period, although ancestral forms lived earlier, in the Jurassic ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

from the Early

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

. It lived in the late

Albian The Albian is both an age of the geologic timescale and a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest or uppermost subdivision of the Early/Lower Cretaceous Epoch/ Series. Its approximate time range is 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma to 100.5 ± 0 ...

stage Stage or stages may refer to: Acting * Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions * Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage" * ''The Stage'', a weekly British theatre newspaper * Sta ...

. It is one of the few ceratopsians known from this period. However, the fossils from this genus have been sparse: only jaw and tooth fragments have been found so far.

Description

''Kulceratops'' was named by Lev Alexandrovich Nesov in 1995.L. A. Nessov, 1995, ''Dinozavri severnoi Yevrazii: Novye dannye o sostave kompleksov, ekologii i paleobiogeografii'', Institute for Scientific Research on the Earth's Crust, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg pp. 1-156 The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...

is ''Kulceratops kulensis''. Both the genus name and the specific name are derived from the Khodzhakul Formation, ''kul'' meaning "lake" in Uzbek. Its fossils were found in

Uzbekistan Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked co ...

, central

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...

, CCMGE No. 495/12457, was in 1914 discovered by geologist Andrei Dmitrievich Arkhangelsky. It consists of a left

maxilla The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. T ...

, of which the front end has been broken off.

Classification

''Kulceratops'' belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

for "horned face"), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with

parrot Parrots, also known as psittacines (), are birds of the roughly 398 species in 92 genera comprising the order Psittaciformes (), found mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three superfamilies: the Psittacoide ...

-like beaks which thrived in North America and

during the Cretaceous Period. As ''Kulceratops'' is the oldest known neoceratopian, Nesov assigned it to a special Archaeoceratopsidae. Later workers considered it a member of the Protoceratopidae or at least a basal member of

Neoceratopia Ceratopsia or Ceratopia ( or ; Greek: "horned faces") is a group of herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs that thrived in what are now North America, Europe, and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period, although ancestral forms lived earlier, in the Jurassic ...

. Due to the paucity of the remains, it is considered a '' nomen dubium''

Diet

''Kulceratops'', like all ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the early 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.

References

Ceratopsians Albian life Early Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia Fossils of Uzbekistan Fossil taxa described in 1995 Ornithischian genera {{ceratopsian-stub

Description

Classification

Diet

See also

References