Marginocephalia

Marginocephalians
Temporal range: Late JurassicLate Cretaceous, 156–65Ma
Skull of Triceratops horridus
Scientific classification e
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Ornithischia
Clade: Cerapoda
Clade: Marginocephalia
Sereno, 1986

Marginocephalia ("fringed heads") is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs that includes the thick-skulled pachycephalosaurids, and horned ceratopsians. They were all herbivores, walking on two or four legs, and are characterized by a bony ridge or frill at the back of the skull. The clade evolved in the Jurassic period, and became common in the Upper Cretaceous.

References

  1. ^ Zheng, Xiao-Ting; You, Hai-Lu; Xu, Xing; Dong, Zhi-Ming (19 March 2009). "An Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid dinosaur with filamentous integumentary structures". Nature 458 (7236): 333–336. Bibcode:2009Natur.458..333Z. doi:10.1038/nature07856. PMID 19295609. 
  2. ^ Richard J. Butler, Jin Liyong, Chen Jun, Pascal Godefroit (2011). "The postcranial osteology and phylogenetic position of the small ornithischian dinosaur Changchunsaurus parvus from the Quantou Formation (Cretaceous: Aptian–Cenomanian) of Jilin Province, north-eastern China". Palaeontology 54 (3): 667–683. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2011.01046.x. 
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Last modified on 22 February 2013, at 20:42