Leptoceratops

Leptoceratops is a genus of ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of North America. First found in Alberta in 1910, the type species Leptoceratops gracilis was named in 1914 by Barnum Brown for a partial skull and skeleton of two individuals found in the Scollard Formation of Alberta. Additional specimens found in the Scollard include one complete and two mostly complete skeletons together, uncovered in 1947 by Charles M. Sternberg. Specimens from Montana that were among the earliest referred to Leptoceratops have since been moved to their own genera Montanoceratops and Cerasinops, while new specimens of L. gracilis include bonebed remains from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana and a partial skeleton from the Lance Formation of Wyoming. Together with related taxa, Leptoceratops is the eponymous genus of the family Leptoceratopsidae. Leptoceratops is known from more than ten individuals, all from Maastrichtian deposits of Alberta, Montana and Wyoming, representing the entire skeleton.

Leptoceratops

Hectonichus · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
LeptoceratopsidaePBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB, for Ceratopsia
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Ceratopsia
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Ceratopsia
Length
3 mWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 6.2 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Late Cretaceous — about 8 of 8 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 8 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences71–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences70–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences69–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences68–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences67–66 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72.7 Mya65.5 Mya

8 occurrences of Leptoceratops on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

8 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

4 formations

Scollard — 52.33°N, 113.12°WScollard — 52.08°N, 113.01°WScollard — 51.82°N, 112.98°WHell Creek — 45.46°N, 104.16°WHell Creek — 45.59°N, 104.91°WHell Creek — 45.00°N, 103.19°W"Lance" — 44.95°N, 108.87°WPinyon Conglomerate — 44.06°N, 110.38°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Leptoceratops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Leptoceratops and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Leptoceratops and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

78 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Leptoceratops, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

7 references

Each of the 8 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Leptoceratops

Credit
Hectonichus
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itLeptoceratopsidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brown 1914