Serendipaceratops
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''Serendipaceratops'' (meaning "serendipitous horned face") 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 ...
of herbivorous
ornithischia Ornithischia () is an extinct order of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. The name ''Ornithischia'', or "bird-hipped", reflects this similarity and is derived from the Greek s ...
n
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 ...
, possibly an ankylosaur, 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 th ...
Period of Australia. The type species, ''S. arthurcclarkei'', was named in 2003.


Discovery and species

The first known bone from ''Serendipaceratops'', an
ulna The ulna (''pl''. ulnae or ulnas) is a long bone found in the forearm that stretches from the elbow to the smallest finger, and when in anatomical position, is found on the medial side of the forearm. That is, the ulna is on the same side of t ...
(lower arm bone), was in 1993 discovered in Australia near
Kilcunda Kilcunda is a seaside town located south east of Melbourne between Phillip Island and Wonthaggi near Dalyston via the South Gippsland Highway on the Bass Highway, in the Bass Coast Shire of Gippsland, Victoria, Australia. Known originally as ...
, on the south-east coast of
Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...
. The find took place during the "
Dinosaur Cove The Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia is a fossil-bearing site in the south-east of the continent where the Otway Ranges meet the sea to the west of Cape Otway, adjacent to Great Otway National Park (''map''). The inaccessible ocean-front clif ...
" project, uncovering remains at the basis of a cliff face at the shoreline; the fossil was excavated in the "Arch", a small area of sea-floor protected from the waves by a dam. In 2003, 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 specimen ...
''Serendipaceratops arthurcclarkei'' was named and described by
Tom Rich Thomas Rich (born c. 1940), generally known as Tom Rich, is an Australian palaeontologist. He is, as of 2019, Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Museums Victoria. Education and career *He was a student of Professor Ruben Arthur Stirt ...
and
Patricia Vickers-Rich Patricia Arlene Vickers-Rich (born 11 July 1944), also known as Patricia Rich, is an Australian Professor of Palaeontology and Palaeobiology, who researches the environmental changes that have impacted Australia (including the ancient super ...
.T. Rich and P. Vickers-Rich. 2003. Protoceratopsian? ulnae from Australia. ''Records of the Queen Victoria Museum Launceston'' 113:1-12 Initially, the discoverers had not considered the possibility that the fossil might have been ceratopsian in nature as at this would have been the last group of
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 ...
s one would have expected to find evidence of in Australia. Instead they had tried to convince themselves it was a
theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally c ...
bone. Some months later, however, on a visit to the
Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (RTMP, and often referred to as the Royal Tyrrell Museum) is a palaeontology museum and research facility in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The museum was named in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, and is sit ...
in
Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...
, Canada, colleague
Dale Russell Dale Alan Russell (27 December 1937 – 21 December 2019) was an American-Canadian geologist and palaeontologist. Throughout his career Russell worked as the Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Research Professor a ...
pointed out its striking similarity to the ulna of ''
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 l ...
''. Hence the genus name, referring to
serendipity Serendipity is an unplanned fortunate discovery. Serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of product invention and scientific discovery. Etymology The first noted use of "serendipity" was by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754. I ...
and combining this reference with ~''ceratops'', a common suffix in ceratopsian generic names. The specific name honours
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
writer Arthur C. Clarke. A personal friend of the couple and author of books such as '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ''
Rendezvous with Rama ''Rendezvous with Rama'' is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1973. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a cylindrical alien starship that enters the Solar System. The story is told from the ...
'', Clarke first became interested in science as a child because he became fascinated by dinosaurs. Perhaps coincidentally, ''"Serendip"'' is a former name for
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
, Clarke's adoptive country. ''Serendipaceratops'' is known only from its
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 ...
NMV P186385, a single left
ulna The ulna (''pl''. ulnae or ulnas) is a long bone found in the forearm that stretches from the elbow to the smallest finger, and when in anatomical position, is found on the medial side of the forearm. That is, the ulna is on the same side of t ...
found in the
Wonthaggi Formation The Wonthaggi Formation is an informal geological formation in Victoria, Australia whose strata date back to the Early Cretaceous. It is part of the Strzelecki Group within the Gippsland Basin. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have be ...
, dating from the early
Aptian The Aptian is an age in the geologic timescale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early or Lower Cretaceous Epoch or Series and encompasses the time from 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma to 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma (million years ago), a ...
, in 2003 considered to have been about 115 million years old.


Description

The holotype ulna has a preserved length of about sixteen centimetres. At the rear top, its
olecranon The olecranon (, ), is a large, thick, curved bony eminence of the ulna, a long bone in the forearm that projects behind the elbow. It forms the most pointed portion of the elbow and is opposite to the cubital fossa or elbow pit. The olecranon ...
process has broken off. The shaft is rather flattened.


Classification

''Serendipaceratops'' was originally described as a member of the
Neoceratopsia 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 ...
and one of the earliest known ceratopsian dinosaurs, and the only one known from the southern hemisphere, with the possible exception of the dubious
South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
n genus ''
Notoceratops ''Notoceratops'' (meaning "southern horned face") is a dubious genus of extinct ornithischian dinosaur based on an incomplete, toothless left dentary (now lost) from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia (in Argentina), probably dating to the Campani ...
'', which also may be another kind of
ornithischia Ornithischia () is an extinct order of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. The name ''Ornithischia'', or "bird-hipped", reflects this similarity and is derived from the Greek s ...
n dinosaur. In addition to the holotype ulna, another supposed ceratopsian ulna was found at
Dinosaur Cove The Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia is a fossil-bearing site in the south-east of the continent where the Otway Ranges meet the sea to the west of Cape Otway, adjacent to Great Otway National Park (''map''). The inaccessible ocean-front clif ...
, in south-west Victoria. It is a little younger at 106 million years old, having been found in the
Eumeralla Formation The Eumeralla Formation is a geological formation in Victoria, Australia whose strata date back to the Early Cretaceous. It is Aptian to Albian in age. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation, particularl ...
. The scientists who first studied the ulnae said that they most closely resembled those of ''Leptoceratops'', but subsequent studies have shown that this interpretation is likely incorrect. In a comprehensive survey of the dinosaurs from Australia and New Zealand, Federico Angolin and colleagues in 2010 found that the ulna did not especially resemble that of a basal ceratopsian any more than of any other quadruped
genasauria Genasauria is a clade of extinct beaked, primarily herbivorous dinosaurs. Paleontologist Paul Sereno first named Genasauria in 1986. The name Genasauria is derived from the Latin word ''gena'' meaning ‘cheek’ and the Greek word ''saúra'' ( ...
n ornithischian, lacking ceratopsian
synapomorphies In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to have ...
, and that in fact it was more generally similar to the ulna of the Australian ankylosaur ''
Minmi Michiko Evwana (born December 8, 1974), better known by her stage name , is a Japanese hip-hop and reggae musician,, United Daily News (in Chinese), August 22, 2008 as well as a singer-songwriter and record producer. She is the first soca ar ...
''. It could thus not be confidently referred to any ornithischian group, and should be considered a '' nomen dubium''.Agnolin, F.L., Ezcurra, M.D., Pais, D.F. and Salisbury, S.W. (2010). "A reappraisal of the Cretaceous non-avian dinosaur faunas from Australia and New Zealand: Evidence for their Gondwanan affinities." ''Journal of Systematic Palaeontology'', 8(2): 257-300 However, in 2014 Rich ''
et al References Notes References Further reading

* * {{Latin phrases Lists of Latin phrases, E ...
.'' published a statistical study showing that the proportions of the holotype ulna fell within ceratopsian morphospace and found the taxon to be valid based on a unique combination of characters. Most recently, Rozadilla ''et al.'' in 2021 found that while the taxon was valid, the ulna of ''Serendipaceratops'' was deformed, making Rich et al's conclusions about its classification invalid. Instead, Rozadilla et al. classified ''Serendipaceratops'' as an ankylosaur, because of the ulna's robust proportions.


References


External links


Geoscience Australia
(Department of Australian Government)
BBC article
on 19 July 2005

in "Dinosaurs of Darkness" Exhibition
National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...
Article
Planet DinosaurDinobase
fro
PALAEONTOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP University Of Bristol
{{Taxonbar, from=Q135287 Ornithischian genera Early Cretaceous dinosaurs of Australia Nomina dubia Fossil taxa described in 2003 Taxa named by Patricia Vickers-Rich Taxa named by Tom Rich Paleontology in Victoria