The ever - growing horned dinosaur kinsfolk has a novel phallus : a heavily progress , medium - firedog - sized plant eater with an interesting corrugated texture on most of its skull . It ’s calledHualianceratops wucaiwanensis , and unlike itsTriceratopscousin , this dinosaur put up on its hind pes – and it did n’t actually have horns . The new genus and species – one of the oldest horned dinosaur ever incur – is described inPLOS ONEthis week .
A squad led by Fenglu Han from theChina University of Geosciencesdescribed the new dinosaur after studying a ossified partial skull and metrical unit collected back in 2002 from the Upper Jurassic Shishugou constitution of the Junggar Basin in Xinjiang Province , northwestern China . A reconstruction of the 25 - centimeter - long ( 10 - inch - long ) skull is image below .
The genus name combines “ hualian , ” which mean cosmetic face in Chinese , with “ ceratops ” for horned face in Greek , and it refers to the grain found on most of the skull . And “ wucaiwan , ” Chinese for five color bay , refers to the area where the specimen was discovered .
While tusk dinosaur of the suborder Ceratopsia are some of the well - studied herbivorous , beaked dinosaurs , their early evolution is still controversial and unclear , specially since the fossil of the old form are often poorly keep .
At about 160 million years old , Hualianceratopsis the same long time as the oldest - known horned dino , Yinlong downsi – though both are hornless . Yinlongwas discovered by the same research team in 2002 as well . " Finding these two species in the same dodo beds reveals there was more diversity there than we previously recognized , " field of study co - authorCatherine Forsterof George Washington University says in astatement . That means at least five ceratopsian lineages were present at the beginning of the tardy Jurassic : Yinlong , Hualianceratops , ChaoyangsaurusandXuanhuaceratops , Psittacosaurus , and Neoceratopsia . That last chemical group went on to dominate in the Late Cretaceous .
F. Han et al . , PLOS ONE 2015
