Sinoceratops

What it was like

Sinoceratops was a large, four-legged plant eater with a broad, bony frill and a row of short horns curling forward along its edge, along with a single horn on its nose. Its build was sturdy and its size was fairly typical for a ceratopsid, the group that also includes Triceratops.

It is the only ceratopsid dinosaur known from Asia. All its close relatives, including Triceratops, Styracosaurus, and Centrosaurus, come from fossil beds in North America, making Sinoceratops important evidence that this group of horned dinosaurs once crossed between the continents.

Its world

Sinoceratops lived from about 84 to 72 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous, in what is now China. Its remains come from the Hongtuya Formation.

It shared this world with the huge duck-billed Shantungosaurus, the tyrannosaur Zhuchengtyrannus, and smaller dinosaurs including the horned Zhuchengceratops and the armored Sinankylosaurus.

How it was found

Xu and colleagues named Sinoceratops in 2010, giving it the species name Sinoceratops zhuchengensis. It is known from a single find, but that discovery filled a long-standing gap, since no ceratopsid had ever been confirmed outside North America before.