Ceratops

Ceratops Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 77.5 Ma PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Holotype left horncore
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Clade:	Dinosauria
Order:	†Ornithischia
Family:	†Ceratopsidae
Genus:	†Ceratops Marsh, 1888
Species:	†C. montanus
Binomial name
Ceratops montanus Marsh, 1888
Synonyms
Proceratops montanus (Marsh, 1888) Lull, 1906

Ceratops (meaning "horn face") is a dubious genus of herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur which lived during the Late Cretaceous. Its fossils have been found in Montana. Although poorly known, Ceratops is important in the history of dinosaurs, since it is the type genus for which both the Ceratopsia and the Ceratopsidae have been named. The material is too poor to be confidently referred to better specimens, and Ceratops is thus considered a nomen dubium.

The first remains referred to Ceratops — an occipital condyle and a pair of horn cores — were found by John Bell Hatcher (1861–1904) in the late summer of 1888 near the Cow Creek in Blaine County in the uppermost Judith River Formation of Montana. Hatcher was at the time employed by Professor Othniel Charles Marsh who the same year named the find as the type species Ceratops montanus. The generic name was derived from Greek κέρας, keras, "horn", and ὤψ, ops, "face". The specific name referred to Montana. Marsh originally believed the animal to be similar to Stegosaurus, but with two horns on the back of its head, a body length of twenty-five to thirty feet, horizontal plates on its back and bipedal. According to Marsh it would have "represented a very strange appearance". In his illustration of the horn pair, purportedly showing them from behind, Marsh had switched their position and rotated their outside to the rear to make them point inwards.