Leptoceratopsidae
Leptoceratopsidae is an extinct family of neoceratopsian dinosaurs from Asia, North America and possibly Europe. Leptoceratopsids resembled, and were closely related to, other neoceratopsians, such as the families Protoceratopsidae and Ceratopsidae, but they were more primitive and generally smaller.

Uncredited · 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- Also called
- leptoceratopsidPBDB
- Sits inside
- NeoceratopsiaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ceratopsia
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Ceratopsia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ceratopsia
Time the record covers
At least 28 million years on record.
The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 121.4 Mya to 66 Mya.
31 occurrences of Leptoceratopsidae 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
31 occurrencesThese 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
18 formations
- Two Medicine Formation · Montana Group5
- Scollard Formation · Edmonton Group3
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group3
- St. Mary River Formation2
- Oldman Formation · Belly River Group2
- Hongtuya Formation · Wangshi Group2
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The named rock units Leptoceratopsidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Leptoceratopsidae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Leptoceratopsidae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
186 taxa- Leptoceratops gracilis5 sites
- Crocodylia4 sites
- Cerasinops hodgskissi3 sites
- Hadrosauridae3 sites
- Leptoceratops3 sites
- Montanoceratops cerorhynchus3 sites
- Adocus2 sites
- Anomotodon hermani2 sites
- Archaeolamna kopingensis2 sites
- Belemnellocamax2 sites
- Carcharias latus2 sites
- Carcharias tenuis2 sites
- Champsosaurus2 sites
- Cretolamna borealis2 sites
- Gonioteuthis2 sites
- Gremlin slobodorum2 sites
- Lepisosteus2 sites
- Ornithischia2 sites
- Osteichthyes2 sites
- Paranomotodon2 sites
- Paraorthacodus conicus2 sites
- Protosphyraena2 sites
- Pycnodontidae2 sites
- Richardoestesia isosceles2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 29 sites for Leptoceratopsidae, 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
25 references- A new neoceratopsian dinosaur linking North American and Asian taxa3
- A new Late Cretaceous leptoceratopsid (Dinosauria: Ceratopsia) from the Oldman Formation (Campanian) of Alberta, Canada2
- New leptoceratopsids from the Upper Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada2
- The first neoceratopsian dinosaur remains from Europe2
- Cranial anatomy and biogeography of the first Leptoceratops gracilis (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) specimens from the Hell Creek Formation, southeast Montana2
- The paleontology, geology and taphonomy of the Tooth Draw Deposit; Hell Creek Formation (Maastrictian), Butte County, South Dakota1
- A new leptoceratopsid dinosaur from Maastrichtian-aged deposits of the Sustut Basin, northern British Columbia, Canada1
- A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of eastern North America, and implications for dinosaur biogeography1
- A new leptoceratopsid (Ornithischia, Ceratopsia) with a unique ischium from the Upper Cretaceous of Shandong Province, China1
- The first ceratopsian dinosaur from South Korea1
- A redescription of the Montanoceratops cerorhynchus holotype with a review of referred material1
- First basal neoceratopsian from the Oldman Formation (Belly River Group), southern Alberta1
Each of the 31 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. 13 further references are not listed. 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 content1
Picture of Leptoceratopsidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Leptoceratopsidae was found in Sketchfab.
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 itNeoceratopsia through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Nopcsa 1923)