Hornless Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis Ancestor of Horned Triceratops

Summary: A Dec. 9 PLOS ONE article presents hornless Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis as a Jurassic Age ancestor of the Cretaceous Age's horned Triceratops.

life restoration of Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis by scientific illustrator Portia Sloan Rollings: GW University @GWtweets via Twitter Dec. 9, 2015

Even such behemoths in the dinosaur world as Triceratops appear to start small as Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis, according to an article published online Dec. 9, 2015, in the multi-disciplinary, open-access journal PLOS ONE.

The four co-authors and co-researchers base their findings upon the discovery of a dinosaur fossil preserving a pair of hind feet and a “slightly bashed-up” partial skull. The prehistoric, reptilian fossil comes from a site excavated by paleontologists in an area close to the Gobi Desert in the Xinjiang Province of western China. The site draws the attention of archaeologists and paleontologists as the discovery location of the ceratopsian (“horned face”) dinosaur Yinlong downsi (“Downs’ hidden dragon”) in 2006.

The 2015 discovery further elucidates ceratopsian ancestry.

Postdoctoral researcher Fenglu Han at China University of Geosciences in Wuhan and paleoartist Portia Sloan Rollings fit together Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis (“five color bay’s ornamental horned face”).

They give the 160 million-year-old fossil ancestral honors previously claimed by Yinlong, one of five ceratopsian dinosaur lineages with Chaoyangsaurus + Xuanhuaceratops, Hualianceratops, Neoceratopsia and Psittacosaurus. Ceratopsian dinosaurs have as their most famous representative Triceratops (“three-horned face”), a 30-foot-long (9-meter-long) contemporary of Tyrannosaurus rex (“tyrant lizard”) from about 67 million years ago. The ceratopsian dinosaur is classified as a biped of two-footed movement in its earlier forms and as a quadruped of four-footed mobility in its subsequent forms.

Hualianceratops juggles a big head, a spaniel-sized body and two ambulatory hind feet.

Catherine Forster, associate professor of biology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and co-author, knows of Hualianceratops pioneering features, but not the size, of Triceratops.

The mismatch leads her to comment: “It [Hualianceratops] would look very odd, with its relatively big head and running about on its hind legs. It’s not usual today to see animals walking on their hind legs. Humans are very unusual in this respect. But it was very common in the dinosaur world.”

Dr. Forster and her fellow co-authors and co-researchers mention for Hualianceratops measurements of 30 feet (1 meter) in length, a far cry from Triceratops’ bulldozer-sized dimensions.

The co-researchers note Hualianceratops’ hornlessness, sharp beak, small neck frill and triangular head.

Elaborate horns and full neck frills ornament the massive body and head of Triceratops, iconically horned dinosaur of the Cretaceous Age of chalk, dinosaurs and evergreens.

Their minimal appearance or non-existence in Hualianceratops proves that the age of the dinosaurs cannot be presumed as lacking in diverse behaviors, life cycles and physiques. The Cretaceous Age of Triceratops and the Jurassic Age of Hualianceratops qualified as diversely complex in meat- and plant-eating crocodilian, dinosaur, primitive mammal and turtle presences. Scientists question the causes of mass extinctions 66 million years ago of the world’s largest reptiles and most successful apex predators for 135 million years.

Hualianceratops reveals modest behaviors and physiques whose modification gives us mega-intimidating, multi-horned Triceratops.

Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis fossil comes from same site, Shishugou Formation in northwestern China's Xinjiang province as the same researchers' earlier fossil find of Yinlong downsi, described in 2006; pencil drawing with digital coloring of Yinlong downsi by French-born paleoartist and physicist Nobumichi "Nobu" Tamura: CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

life restoration of Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis by scientific illustrator Portia Sloan Rollings: GW University @GWtweets via Twitter Dec. 9, 2015.
Available @ https://twitter.com/GWtweets/status/674693387606429696

Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis fossil comes from same site, Shishugou Formation in northwestern China's Xinjiang province as the same researchers' earlier fossil find of Yinlong downsi, described in 2006; pencil drawing with digital coloring of Yinlong downsi by French-born paleoartist and physicist Nobumichi "Nobu" Tamura: CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yinlong_BW.jpg

For further information:

Dunham, Will. 9 December 2015. "Modest Chinese dinosaur was forerunner to later horned behemoths." Reuters > Technology.
Available @ http://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-dinosaur/modest-chinese-dinosaur-was-forerunner-to-later-horned-behemoths-idUSKBN0TS30H20151209

George Washington University. 9 December 2015. "Triceratops gets a cousin: Researchers identify another horned dinosaur species." EurekAlert! > Public Releases.
Available @ http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-12/gwu-tga120715.php

GW University @GWtweets. 9 December 2015. "#GWU researchers find a new dinosaur the size of a dog. Probably still not great as a pet." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/GWtweets/status/674693387606429696

Han, Fenglu; Catherine A. Forster; James M. Clark; and Xing Xu. 9 December 2015. "A New Taxon of Basal Ceratopsian from China and the Early Evolution of Ceratopsia." PLOS ONE. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0143369
Available @ http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0143369

SciNews. 10 December 2015. "Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis -- a primitive horned dinosaur." YouTube.
Available @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExLd43W6wCI

Xu, Xing; Catherine A. Forster; James M. Clark; and Jinyou Mo. 7 September 2006. "A Basal Ceratopsian With Transitional Features From the Late Jurassic of Northwestern China." Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, vol. 273, issue 1598: 2135–2140.
Available via US NLM (U.S. National Library of Medicine)/NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) @ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1635516/