Protoceratops andrewsi PROH-toh-SAIR-uh-tops
"First horned face"
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Protoceratops 1.8 m (5.9 ft) long
2 people holding hands
- Length
- 1.8 m (5.9 ft) — About 1.8 m long, ~80 kg — sheep-sized early ceratopsian.
- Period
- Late Cretaceous (75–71 Mya)
- Place
- Asia · Mongolia
- Food
- Herbivore — Tough desert plants — Protoceratops lived in arid environments full of sand dunes.
Protoceratops was a small ceratopsian without big horns — just a small bony frill behind the skull and a parrot-like beak. Hundreds of skeletons have been found in Mongolia, including the famous ‘Fighting Dinosaurs’ fossil where a Protoceratops is locked in combat with a Velociraptor, both buried by a collapsing sand dune.
What we know
- Small bony frill, parrot beak, no horns.
- Found in Mongolia in vast numbers — hundreds of skeletons known.
- The 'Fighting Dinosaurs' specimen preserves combat with a Velociraptor.
- Eggs and nests found nearby, mistakenly attributed to Oviraptor in 1924.
What we guess
- Whether the small frill was for defense, display, or muscle attachment for chewing.
- Whether the legend of the griffin came from ancient peoples finding Protoceratops bones near gold deposits.
- Whether the eggs Roy Chapman Andrews collected in the 1920s belonged to Protoceratops or Oviraptor (later DNA-style analyses say both species used the area).