Judiceratops

Judiceratops Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 78–77.5 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Restoration
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Order:	†Ornithischia
Suborder:	†Ceratopsia
Family:	†Ceratopsidae
Subfamily:	†Chasmosaurinae
Genus:	†Judiceratops , 2013
Species:	†J. tigris
Binomial name
†Judiceratops tigris Longrich, 2013

Judiceratops (/ˌdʒuːdiːˈsɛrətɒps/ JOO-dee-SERR-ə-tops; meaning "Judith River horned face") is an extinct horned dinosaur. It lived around 78 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now Montana, United States. Like other horned dinosaurs, Judiceratops was a large, quadrupedal herbivore. It is the oldest known chasmosaurine.^[1]

Description[]

Posterior of the frill (parietal bone) of Judiceratops tigris, holotype. A, dorsal view, B, ventral view, C, posterior view. The epoccipital hornlets are very low and fused to the back of the frill, forming low keels.

The holotype YPM VPPU 022404 consists of an incomplete skull including the horns, parts of the frills, and fragments from the back of the frill. Other fragmentary specimens are known from the same area, which preserve distinctive features of the frill. Judiceratops shows a distinctive combination of characters, not seen in other ceratopsids. Its frill (parietal bone) has a broad midline bar, a rounded caudal margin, and reduced osteoderms (bony projections) on the rear edge of the frill, the epiparietals. The osteoderms on the lateral margins of the frill are large near the front, but small towards the back. The postorbital (located above the eyes) horns are moderately elongate, inclined forward and outwards, and have an unusual teardrop-shaped cross section.^[1]

Classification[]

Judiceratops is a basal chasmosaurine. It is more primitive than most genera within the subfamily with the exception of Mercuriceratops. The below cladogram follows Longrich (2015), who named a new species of Pentaceratops, and included nearly all species of chasmosaurine.^[2]

Despite the fragmentary nature of the fossils, they can be identified as a distinct species. Frills of horned dinosaurs are highly distinctive, with different species having distinct arrangements of the epoccipital hornlets. From species to species, hornlets differed in their number, arrangement, size, and shape, and the bones of the frill, the squamosal and parietal, differ as well. This probably reflects rapid evolution of the frill in response to sexual selection, similar to how sexual selection creates a large variety of display feathers in living dinosaurs such as birds of paradise.

Paleoecology[]

Provenance and occurrence[]

The remains of the holotype specimen of Judiceratops YPM VPPU 022404 were recovered from the Judith River Formation in Hill County, Montana. The specimen was collected in brown/green mudstone and gray/yellow sandstone which dates to the Campanian stage of Late Cretaceous period, approximately 78 million years ago. This specimen is housed at the Yale Peabody Museum.

Fauna and habitat[]

Judiceratops tigris

Judiceratops shared its paleoenvironment with bony fishes, amphibians, the Choristoderan Champsosaurus, the hadrosaur Brachylophosaurus canadensis, the pachycephalosaur Colepiocephale lambei, the theropods Dromaeosaurus, Gorgosaurus and Troodon, and with fellow ceratopsians Albertaceratops, Medusaceratops and Avaceratops.

Evolution[]

Judiceratops is the oldest known member of the Chasmosaurinae, but already shows many of the distinctive features of the group. Along with the presence of specialized centrosaurines such as Albertaceratops at the same time, it suggests rapid evolution of the horned dinosaurs between the Turonian (when the oldest horned dinosaur in North America, Zuniceratops, appears) and the middle Campanian, when Chasmosaurinae and Centrosaurinae show up in the fossil record. This period spans about 15 million years- a relatively short period in terms of dinosaur evolution.

Although Judiceratops is currently the oldest known chasmosaurine, it is clearly not ancestral to later horned dinosaurs such as Chasmosaurus and Pentaceratops. Instead the specialized features of the frill- the large winglike hornlets on the margins of the frill, and the reduced ones on the back- show that it represents a side branch in chasmosaurine evolution. No fossils from this lineage are known from later rocks, consistent with a pattern of high turnover- species rapidly evolved, and became extinct- as seen in other horned dinosaurs in the latest Cretaceous.

See also[]

• Timeline of ceratopsian research

References[]