Navajoceratops (meaning "Navajo horned face") is a genus of ceratopsid dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period of what is now North America. The genus contains a single species, N. sullivani, named after Robert M. Sullivan, leader of the expeditions that recovered the holotype.[1]

Navajoceratops
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, ~75.0–73.4 Ma
Holotype parietals from the front and back
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Clade: Ornithischia
Clade: Neornithischia
Clade: Ceratopsia
Family: Ceratopsidae
Subfamily: Chasmosaurinae
Genus: Navajoceratops
Fowler and Freedman Fowler, 2020
Type species
Navajoceratops sullivani
Fowler and Freedman Fowler, 2020
Geological map of the southeast San Juan Basin; A (lower right) is where the holotype was found

The holotype specimen, SMP VP-1500, collected in 2002, consists of a partial skull. It was discovered in the Campanian Hunter Wash Member of the Kirtland Formation, New Mexico.[1] It was informally named in 2016.[2]

Navajoceratops was a member of the Chasmosaurinae. Alongside fellow chasmosaurine Terminocavus, also from the Kirtland Formation and described in the same paper, Navajoceratops was found to represent a stratigraphic and morphological intermediate between Pentaceratops and Anchiceratops. Navajoceratops was also found to be marginally less derived than Terminocavus. [1]

Chasmosaurinae

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c Fowler, D.W.; Freedman Fowler, E.A. (2020). "Transitional evolutionary forms in chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaurs: evidence from the Campanian of New Mexico". PeerJ. 8: e9251. doi:10.7717/peerj.9251. PMC 7278894. PMID 32547873.
  2. ^ Denver Warwick Fowler (April 2016). "Dinosaurs and time: chronostratigraphic frameworks and their utility in analysis of dinosaur paleobiology". scholarworks.montana.edu. Retrieved 17 February 2019.