Stegoceras is a genus of pachycephalosaurid dinosaur that lived in what is now North America during the Late Cretaceous period. The first specimens from Alberta, Canada, were described in 1902, and the type species was based on these remains. Several other species have been placed in the genus over the years, but these have since been moved to other genera or deemed junior synonyms. Currently only S. validum and S. novomexicanum, named in 2011 from fossils found in New Mexico, remain.
About Stegoceras in brief
Stegoceras is a genus of pachycephalosaurid dinosaur that lived in what is now North America during the Late Cretaceous period, about 77. 5 to 74 million years ago. The first specimens from Alberta, Canada, were described in 1902, and the type species was based on these remains. Several other species have been placed in the genus over the years, but these have since been moved to other genera or deemed junior synonyms. Currently only S. validum and S. novomexicanum, named in 2011 from fossils found in New Mexico, remain. Stegocer as was a small, bipedal dinosaur about 2 to 2. 5 metres long, and weighed around 10 to 40 kilograms. It had a rigid vertebral column, and a stiffened tail. The skull was roughly triangular with a short snout, and had a thick, broad, and relatively smooth dome on the top. The function of the dome has been debated, and competing theories include use in intra-specific combat, sexual display, or species recognition. It is thought to have been flat in juvenile animals and to have grown into a dome with age. Pachycephalosaurs are today grouped with the horned ceratopsians in the group Marginocephalia. It was most likely herbivorous, and it probably had a good sense of smell. A complete skull with associated parts of the skeleton was found in 1924, which shed more light on these animals.
The generic name comes from the Greek stegè ωέγη, meaning ‘roof’ and kerasκέρα, meaninghorn. The specific name validus means ‘strong’ in Latin, possibly in reference to the thick skull-roof. It has been considered basal compared to other pachydactyls, but is now considered basal compared to some other species of dinosaur. It may have had a single horn, and therefore had a horn-aired animal. The teeth were small and serrated. The back of the skull was ornamented by tubercles and nodes, many in rows, and the largest formed small horns on the shelf. The fossils were found in the Belly River Group, in the Red Deer River district of Calgary, Canada. The remains consisted of two partial skull domes from two animals of different sizes collected in 1898. Based on these specimens, Lawrence Lambe described and named the new monotypic genus and species StegOCeras validus in 1902. Lambe was unsure of what kind of dinosaur they were, and whether they represented one species or more; he suggested the domes were situated before the nasal bones on the midline of the head. In 1903, Hungarian palaeontologist Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás suggested they were in fact frontal and nasal bones, and that the animal would have a single, unpunicornorn dinosaur. In 1918, Lambe referred another dome to S. validus.
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This page is based on the article Stegoceras published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
