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Bob's Dinosaurs Blog

By Bob Strauss, About.com Guide to Dinosaurs

New Dinosaur on the Block: Helioceratops

Thursday July 9, 2009

It's not true that all the cool dinosaur names are already taken. Witness Helioceratops (Greek for "sun horned face"), an early ceratopsian recently named by Chinese paleontologists. After its scattered fossils were discovered in 2003, it took six years for experts to conclusively "diagnose" this middle-Cretaceous herbivore, which was considerably smaller than later, more famous ceratopsians like Triceratops and Pentaceratops.

Just how small was Helioceratops? Here's the quote from Xinhua, the Chinese news agency: "A Helioceratops looks bigger than a pig but smaller than a cow." My question is, did it go "oink" or "moo?"

Comments

July 13, 2009 at 12:47 pm
(1) Mike says:

Cool!

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