Paleo-reconstruction by Olorotitan on Deviantart
Bagaceratops rozhdestvenskyi (meaning "small-horned face") is an extinct genus of small Ceratopsian dinosaur that lived in what is now Mongolia around 80 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous. [1]
Although emerging late in the reign of the dinosaurs, Bagaceratops had a fairly primitive anatomy and kept the small body size that characterized early ceratopsians; including a tail with neural spines that are longer and are notably thinner; akin to a modern Theropod Spinosaurus.[2]
History of discovery[]
Bagaceratops fossil
The first remains of Bagaceratops were discovered in the Gobi Desert during the 1970s by a joint expedition composed of Mongolian and Polish scientists and it was described in 1975 by two of the expeditions leading scientists, Teresa Maryanska and Halszka Osmólska.[3]
Description[]
A (now outdated) sculpture of Bagaceratops
Bagaceratops grew to an adult size of about 1 meter (3.3 feet) long, 50 centimeters (1.6 feet) high, and weighed around 22 kilograms (50 lbs).[1]
Classification[]
Bagaceratops belonged to the Ceratopsian, a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beak which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous period, which ended roughly 66 million years ago.
Diet[]
Bagaceratops, like all known ceratopsian species, it is interpreted as a herbivorous dinosaur.
Gallery[]
Bagaceratops/Gallery