Bravoceratops
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Bravoceratops Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 70 Ma |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | †Ornithischia |
| Family: | †Ceratopsidae |
| Subfamily: | †Chasmosaurinae |
| Genus: |
†Bravoceratops Wick & Lehman, 2013 |
| Type species | |
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†Bravoceratops polyphemus Wick & Lehman, 2013 |
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Bravoceratops is an extinct 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. Bravoceratops was a relatively large and heavily built, quadrupedal ground-dwelling herbivore. This discovery is significant paleontologically because ceratopsian dinosaur remains occur only rarely in the Javelina Formation, and Bravoceratops provides useful temporal and paleobiogeographic data to researchers about the proliferation of chasmosaurines from Edmontonian to Lancian time during the Late Cretaceous.
The genus name Bravoceratops, means "wild horn-face", and is derived from the Mexican name for the Rio Grande, "Rio Bravo del Norte" (wild river of the north), and the Greek words "keras" (κέρας) meaning "horn" and "ops" (ὤψ) referring to the "face" The specific name polyphemus, refers to the giant cyclops Polyphemus confronted by Odysseus in the Greek epic poem, The Odyssey. Bravoceratops was described and named by Steven L. Wick and Thomas M. Lehman in 2013 and the type species is Bravoceratops polyphemus.
Bravoceratops is known from the holotype specimen TMM 46015-1, which consists of a fragmentary skull in good preservation providing its adequate diagnostic data. Bravoceratops shows a distinctive combination of characters not seen in any previously described chasmosaurine. Two autapomorphies (unique derived traits) were established. Firstly, the median parietal bar, the bone bar between the frill openings, the parietal fenestrae, at mid-length splays out to the rear like a fan and its rear edge is not notched or embayed. Secondly, this rear end of the parietal carries a low epiparietal (a triangular skin ossification) on its midline margin while the upper surface of the bar is at the midline, at the level of the rear bars, hollowed out by a symmetrical depression. It is this hollow in the form of an inverted tear that occasioned the specific name as it resembled the single eye of a cyclops. The authors assumed it formed the base of a horn-like epiparietal. This would imply that a second midline epiparietal, lost in the fossil, would in life have been present on the upper (anterior) frill surface just below the midline marginal epiparietal. This second epiparietal might have been formed as a low boss or spike similar to the pair of epiparietals on the median parietal bar of Anchiceratops or the spike on the midline parietal bar of Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai.
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