Dino of the Week: Hualianceratops

Type Species: Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis

Classification: Dinosauria – Ornithischia – Marginocephalia – Ceratopsia - Chaoyangsauridae

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore 

Though the ceratopsians of the Cretaceous would reach phenomenal sizes, their beginnings were rather austere. Hualianceratops lived one hundred million years before Triceratops, and it’s one of the earliest primitive ceratopsians. It was only three feet long, the size of a spaniel. It was a low browsing herbivore that likely ran on its two legs. Speed would be needed in an environment prowling with large theropods. Hualianceratops had a beaked mouth that it used to clip vegetation. One specimen is known, and it consists of a partial skeleton with skull and lower jaws. The rear sides of the skull, some sacral vertebrae, the right lower hind-limb, the left calf bone, and the left foot were preserved.