Protoceratops Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓The famous 'Fighting Dinosaurs' fossil discovered in the Gobi Desert in 1971 shows a Protoceratops and a Velociraptor locked in combat, with the Velociraptor's sickle claw embedded in the Protoceratops' throat and the Protoceratops biting the Velociraptor's right arm, both buried alive by a collapsing sand dune.
• ✓Protoceratops eggs and nests were among the first dinosaur nests ever discovered, found during the American Museum of Natural History expeditions to Mongolia in the 1920s, though scientists initially misidentified them as belonging to Protoceratops when they actually belonged to the theropod Oviraptor nearby.
• ✓Protoceratops had no real horn despite its name meaning 'first horned face': scientists named it that because they thought it was an ancestor of the big horned ceratopsians like Triceratops, but it only had a small bony bump on its nose.
• ✓Fossil evidence from the Djadokhta Formation shows that Protoceratops lived in an environment of ancient sand dunes similar to today's Sahara Desert, meaning these animals were adapted to a hot, dry, and punishing landscape very different from lush Jurassic forests.
• ✓Scientists have found so many Protoceratops fossils in Mongolia that paleontologists sometimes call it the 'sheep of the Cretaceous,' because entire bone beds packed with individuals of all ages from hatchlings to adults have been unearthed, suggesting they may have lived in large social groups.