ceratopsian
- Also called:
- ceratopian
ceratopsian, any of a group of plant-eating dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period (146 million to 66 million years ago) characterized by a bony frill on the back of the skull and a unique upper beak bone, called a rostral.
The ceratopsians comprise three lineages (see images). Members of the Psittacosauridae, including Psittacosaurus, were mostly bipedal and lived during the Early Cretaceous; they had a beak, a small frill, and no horns. Members of the Protoceratopsidae, including Protoceratops and Leptoceratops, were mostly quadrupedal and slightly larger and lived from the Early to Late Cretaceous; these dinosaurs had a somewhat larger frill but no horns.
The third group, Ceratopsidae, had very large frills and horns on the nose and above the eyes. Ceratopsidae is made up of two lineages: the Chasmosaurinae had large eye horns and small nose horns, and the Centrosaurinae had small eye horns and large nose horns. Chasmosaurinae includes Triceratops and Torosaurus. Triceratops was unusual among ceratopsians in that its bony head frill was short and of solid bone; in other forms the frills were larger and mostly open in the centre. Kosmoceratops, with its broad frill and hooks projecting forward from the top of its skull, and Utahceratops, characterized by a large horn rising from the top of its nose, were close relatives of Triceratops. The skull of Kosmoceratops is considered by many paleontologists to be the most ornate of any known dinosaur.
