Bravoceratops
From 'Rio Bravo del Norte', the Mexican name for the Rio Grande, combined with Greek 'keras' meaning 'horn' and 'ops' meaning 'face', meaning 'wild horn-face'. The species name honors Polyphemus, the cyclops from Homer's Odyssey, referencing the presumed single central horn on the frill.
Late Cretaceous stages
Bravoceratops is a genus of large chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaur that lived approximately 70 million years ago, and is known from the Late Cretaceous Javelina Formation in what is now Texas, United States.
Diagnosis
- Fan-shaped mediodistal parietal bar lacking pronounced midline embayment
- Distinct bilaterally symmetrical teardrop-shaped midline depression on dorsal parietal surface at nexus of parietal rami, interpreted as attachment point for a midline epiparietal
- Low coossified midline epiparietal on posterior margin of parietal
- Nasals constricted behind epinasal forming hourglass shape in dorsal view, with very shallow dorsoventral depth of nasal bridge
- Bifurcated squamosal process on quadratojugal, such that quadratojugal contributes to ventral rim of laterotemporal fenestra
Species
Bravoceratops polyphemus Wick & Lehman, 2013
Type species
Named for the giant cyclops Polyphemus confronted by Odysseus in the Greek epic poem The Odyssey, alluding to a presumed single central horn on the frill that recalled the placement of the Cyclops' eye.
- Holotype
- TMM 46015-1 , Texas Memorial Museum, Austin, Texas, USA (used for collections now housed in the Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at the Jackson School Museum of Earth History, Austin, Texas, USA), now called the Texas Science and Natural History Museum
- Material
- Fragmentary disarticulated adult skull: braincase, supraoccipital, parts of both supraorbital horncores and left postorbital, right nasal, fused nasals and epinasal, both jugals, both quadrates, both quadratojugals, parietal median bar with midline epiparietal, detached lateral epiparietal, parts of right squamosal, coronoid processes of both dentaries, dentary fragment
- Horizon
- lower Javelina Formation, Maastrichtian, Late Cretaceous , 72.2–66.0 million years ago
- Locality
- Hippiewalk, Texas, United States
References
- Wick, S. L.; Lehman, T. M. (2013). A new ceratopsian dinosaur from the Javelina Formation (Maastrichtian) of West Texas and implications for chasmosaurine phylogeny. Naturwissenschaften 100(7): 667-682. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. doi:10.1007/s00114-013-1063-0 wick2013a