Bainoceratops

Taxobox|
name = "Bainoceratops"
status = fossil
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Sauropsida
superordo = Dinosauria
ordo = Ornithischia
infraordo = Ceratopsia
familia = Leptoceratopsidae?
genus = "Bainoceratops"
binomial_authority = Tereschenko & Alifanov, 2003
binomial ="Bainoceratops efremovi"

"Bainoceratops" was a dinosaur from the late Campanian in the Late Cretaceous. It was a ceratopsian first described by Tereschenko and Alifanov in 2003. Its fossils were found in southern Mongolia.

Classification

"Bainoceratops" belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is Greek for "horned face"), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period, which ended roughly 65 million years ago.

Unfortunately, "Bainoceratops" is only known from a vertebral column. This is enough to distinguish it from "Protoceratops" and show that it is more closely related to "Udanoceratops tschizhovi"

Diet

"Bainoceratops", like all Ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", and so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp Ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles.

References

*

External links

* http://www.ntux.at/simonkrauter/newdinorama/dinos/b/bainoceratops/daten.htm (in German)
* [http://www.users.qwest.net/~jstweet1/ceratopia.htm Ceratopsia] at "Thescelosaurus"!