''Zhuchengceratops'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

leptoceratopsid Leptoceratopsidae is an extinct family of neoceratopsian dinosaurs from Asia, North America and Europe. Leptoceratopsids resembled, and were closely related to, other neoceratopsians, such as the families Protoceratopsidae and Ceratopsidae, bu ...

ceratopsia 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. ...

n that lived during the

Upper Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the ...

of modern-day

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It was first described in 2010, by Xu ''et al.'', who created the

binomial Binomial may refer to: In mathematics *Binomial (polynomial), a polynomial with two terms * Binomial coefficient, numbers appearing in the expansions of powers of binomials *Binomial QMF, a perfect-reconstruction orthogonal wavelet decomposition ...

''Zhuchengceratops inexpectus''. The name is derived from the location of Zhucheng, the Latinized-Greek ''ceratops'', or "horned face", and the unexpected articulated nature of 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 several ...

. The skeleton was found in the

Wangshi Group The Wangshi Group () is a geological Group in Shandong, China whose strata date back to the Coniacian to Campanian stages of the Late Cretaceous.Shantungosaurus ''Shantungosaurus'' (meaning "''Shandong Lizard''") is a genus of very large saurolophine hadrosaurid dinosaur found in the Late Cretaceous Wangshi Group of the Shandong Peninsula in China, containing a single species, ''Shantungosaurus giganteu ...

''. ''Zhuchengceratops'' shares many features with Leptoceratopsidae as well as other ceratopsian groups such as

Ceratopsidae Ceratopsidae (sometimes spelled Ceratopidae) is a family of ceratopsian dinosaurs including ''Triceratops'', ''Centrosaurus'', and ''Styracosaurus''. All known species were quadrupedal herbivores from the Upper Cretaceous. All but one species are k ...

. The overall size of the taxon was similar to ''

Leptoceratops ''Leptoceratops'' (meaning 'Thin-horned face' and derived from Greek ''lepto-/λεπτο-'' meaning 'small', 'insignificant', 'slender', 'meagre' or 'lean', ''kerat-/κερατ-'' meaning 'horn' and ''-ops/ωψ'' meaning face), is a genus of lept ...

'', although slightly larger. ''Zhuchengceratops'' was analyzed to be in a group with ''Leptoceratops'' and ''

Udanoceratops ''Udanoceratops'' (meaning "Udan's horned face") is a genus of large leptoceratopsid dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period of Mongolia, in what is now the Djadokhta Formation. Discovery ''Udanoceratops'' was first named and d ...

'', although internal relationships of this triplet were unresolved.

Discovery and naming

''Zhuchengceratops'' is a derived

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. ...

which lived during the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the ...

period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...

in what is now Kugou, Zhucheng County,

. It is known from a partial articulated skeleton including vertebrae, ribs, teeth, and parts of the skull and mandibles. The fossils were recovered from the

Wangshi Group The Wangshi Group () is a geological Group in Shandong, China whose strata date back to the Coniacian to Campanian stages of the Late Cretaceous.Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the ...

. This genus was named by Xing Xu, Kebai Wang, Xijin Zhao, Corwin Sullivan and Shuqing Chen in

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

, and the type species is ''Zhuchengceratops inexpectus''. The genus name was chosen for the location of Zhucheng, where the

was found, and the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

ized-

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 ...

, meaning "horned face". They chose the species name ''inexpectus'' to refer to the unexpected discovery of the articulated skeleton. The recovered specimen of ''Zhuchengceratops'' likely represents an adult, measuring in length and in body mass. ''Zhuchengceratops'' had a particularly massive and deep 50 cm-long mandible that is also thin transversely. This and a number of other

autapomorphies In phylogenetics, an autapomorphy is a distinctive feature, known as a derived trait, that is unique to a given taxon. That is, it is found only in one taxon, but not found in any others or outgroup taxa, not even those most closely related to t ...

unique to the genus lend it significance for increasing the morphological disparity and the

taxonomic Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

diversity of the Leptoceratopsidae. As the third leptoceratopsid from Asia, this find exhibits the coexistence and radiation of two closely related clades, whose differences in jaw and tooth adaptation may represent different feeding strategies.

References

Leptoceratopsids Maastrichtian life Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia Cretaceous China Fossils of China Paleontology in Shandong Fossil taxa described in 2010 Taxa named by Xu Xing Ornithischian genera {{ceratopsian-stub

Discovery and naming

See also

References