Sentences with word «ceratopsian»

Many general discussions of ceratopsian ornaments in museum signage and popular literature often include examples of what they might have been for, but these tend to be rather speculative.

Andrew Knapp, PhD candidate from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and lead author of the study, said: «This resolves a long - standing and hitherto untested hypothesis concerning the origin and function of ornamental traits in ceratopsian dinosaurs.

Mr Knapp said: «If sexual selection is indeed the driver of ornament evolution in ceratopsians, as we are increasingly confident it is, demonstrating it through different lines of evidence can provide a crucial window into tracing its effects over potentially huge timescales.»

You would expect that when a lot of ceratopsian species lived side by side, they would evolve a bigger variation of ornaments than more solitary species.

Other large herbivores, such as three - horned ceratopsians and armored ankylosaurs, also roamed the area (SN: 6/24/17, p. 4).

The fossil record offers an opportunity to see evolution in action over much longer time periods than can be achieved with living organisms, but it is difficult to assign explanations to unusual features such as ceratopsian ornaments with the limited information that fossils provide.

The region has yielded a diverse array of tens of thousands of fossils, including horned dinos called ceratopsians such as Kosmoceratops richardsoni, duck - billed dinos, and two new species of tyrannosaurs — including the 81 - million - year - old Lythronax argestes, the oldest known tyrannosaurid.

Universal Pictures have offered a very cool photo opportunity, recreating a small diorama of the first promotional still from the film, bringing in a large Ceratopsian skull for maximum wow factor!

One major controversy with ceratopsians (the family of Triceratops and Protoceratops) is whether they stood on straight legs like rhinos or crouched crook - legged like crocodiles.

Now, a team working in Canada's Alberta province, near the border with Montana, reports finding a 79 - million - year - old ceratopsian they call Wendiceratops pinhornensis («Wendi» after the Alberta fossil hunter Wendy Sloboda, who discovered the site where the fossils were found, and «pinhornensis» after the name of the site locality, the Pinhorn Provincial Grazing Reserve in Alberta).

But the scientists say that the most important trait is a tall horn on its nose, the earliest sighting of this feature that characterized later ceratopsians.

As the researchers report online today in PLOS ONE, the 6 - meter - long beast (artist's conception above) had the typical ceratopsian features of a frilly crown behind its head and probably had horns over its eyes.

In most dinosaur art before the 1980s, ceratopsians dragged their bellies under legs crooked out to the sides.

According to Dodson's reading of bones, all straight - legged ceratopsian reconstructions suffer from painful shoulder dislocations.

Brontosaurus (now called Apatosaurus) was too massive a creature for a cold - blooded circulation to support on land, so artists depicted him wading through swamps, near crocodilian ceratopsians basking on the shores.

They were a diverse bunch, including the rhinolike ceratopsians and bipedal duck - billed dinosaurs such as Parasaurolophus.

In the Cretaceous, other plant - eaters, such as the duck - billed hadrosaurs and beaked ceratopsians, could have pumped out methane, says Barrett.

A previous research paper from Queen Mary found that the frill in one ceratopsian species, Protoceratops, may have evolved under sexual selection.

Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology in the School of Earth Sciences, explained: «In other numerical work, we had found that nearly all dinosaurs showed a downturn about 100 million years ago, but the exceptions were two herbivore groups, the crested hadrosaurs and the horned ceratopsians.

Triceratops, for example, belongs to a big group of species called ceratopsians, many of which had frills and horns in a dizzying variety of shapes and sizes.

They appear as a metallic mono - ceratopsian skull embedded in black rock.

Many paleontologists have maintained that the horns of ceratopsians were rhinolike, and Witmer can now test that hypothesis.

Scientists have named a new species of horned dinosaur (ceratopsian) based on fossils collected from Montana in the United States and Alberta, Canada.

This is an illustration of the ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period of eastern North America.

His study, published in the journal Cretaceous Research, highlights it as the first fossil from a ceratopsian dinosaur identified from this period of eastern North America.

To test this hypothesis the researchers examined patterns of diversity in the ornamentation of 46 species of ceratopsians, the horned dinosaurs, but found no difference between species that lived together and those that lived separately.

The researchers believe the implications extend beyond the scope of ceratopsians and have consequences for the study of evolutionary theory over vast stretches of time.

Because Wendiceratops is more closely related to a different group of ceratopsians than Triceratops — one that includes the recently discovered «Hellboy» dinosaur — the discovery suggests that the tall and high version of the nose horn evolved twice in the ceratopsian family.

The ceratopsians, horned and frilled dinosaurs that include the famous Triceratops, were one of the most successful and widespread dino groups, especially between about 90 million and 66 million years ago.

But Peter Dodson, a ceratopsian expert at the University of Pennsylvania, argues the proper pose is crook - legged, not necessarily in the «extreme push - ups» pose of modern crocodiles, but certainly not in the straight pillar fashion of modern rhinos either.

«Many groups, including ankylosaurs, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, ornithomimids and tyrannosaurs underwent radiations on this island continent.

Also, ACTUAL * sauropod *, and * ceratopsian *, feet look more like THIS, and THIS: