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----- Original Message -----
From: Kakuru@aol.com
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 10:10 PM
Subject: South American ceratopsians >Hi,
>I am currently reading Michael Novacek's book "Time Traveler." On page 189 he states, "In South America, sauropods >persisted as giant denizens of the Cretaceous landscape, with much more modest incursions of hadrosaurs and >ceratopsians." What ceratopsians are known from South America? The only Ceratopsian that I known from South America is
Notoceratops.
Genus: Notoceratops Tapia, 1918 [nomen dubium]
Type Species: Notoceratops bonarelli Tapia, 1918
Unnamed Formation (Late Cretaceous (?Campanian), Chubut, Argentina.
HoloType: fragmentary left dentary [?now lost?]
Diagnosis of genus and species not published
Tapia did not describe the specimen, but argued that it possessed character
for which it should be placed in the Ceratopsidae. After further study, Huene
(1929) argued that it represented a new and primitive Ceratopsian. Huene
distinguished it by its small size (only 24,5cm in length), subsequently Huene
referred Notoceratops bonarelli to the Protoceratopsidae. Later,
Bonaparte (1978b 1986b) assigned Notoceratops bonarelli to the
Protoceratopsidae, as representing the only South America Ceratopsian.
By
Alessandro Marisa
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