Judiceratops
Judiceratops (/ˌdʒuːdiːˈsɛrətɒps/ JOO-dee-SERR-ə-tops; meaning "Judith River horned face") is an extinct horned dinosaur. It lived around 78 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now Montana, United States. Like other horned dinosaurs, Judiceratops was a large, quadrupedal herbivore. It is the oldest known chasmosaurine.[1]
The holotype YPM VPPU 022404 consists of an incomplete skull including the horns, parts of the frills, and fragments from the back of the frill. Other fragmentary specimens are known from the same area, which preserve distinctive features of the frill. Judiceratops shows a distinctive combination of characters, not seen in other ceratopsids. Its frill (parietal bone) has a broad midline bar, a rounded caudal margin, and reduced osteoderms (bony projections) on the rear edge of the frill, the epiparietals. The osteoderms on the lateral margins of the frill are large near the front, but small towards the back. The postorbital (located above the eyes) horns are moderately elongate, inclined forward and outwards, and have an unusual teardrop-shaped cross section.[1]
Judiceratops is a basal chasmosaurine. It is more primitive than most genera within the subfamily with the exception of Mercuriceratops. The below cladogram follows Longrich (2015), who named a new species of Pentaceratops, and included nearly all species of chasmosaurine.[2]
Despite the fragmentary nature of the fossils, they can be identified as a distinct species. Frills of horned dinosaurs are highly distinctive, with different species having distinct arrangements of the epoccipital hornlets. From species to species, hornlets differed in their number, arrangement, size, and shape, and the bones of the frill, the squamosal and parietal, differ as well. This probably reflects rapid evolution of the frill in response to sexual selection, similar to how sexual selection creates a large variety of display feathers in living dinosaurs such as birds of paradise.
The remains of the holotype specimen of Judiceratops YPM VPPU 022404 were recovered from the Judith River Formation in Hill County, Montana. The specimen was collected in brown/green mudstone and gray/yellow sandstone which dates to the Campanian stage of Late Cretaceous period, approximately 78 million years ago. This specimen is housed at the Yale Peabody Museum.
Judiceratops shared its paleoenvironment with bony fishes, amphibians, the Choristoderan Champsosaurus, the hadrosaur Brachylophosaurus canadensis, the pachycephalosaur Colepiocephale lambei, the theropods Dromaeosaurus, Gorgosaurus and Troodon, and with fellow ceratopsians Albertaceratops, Medusaceratops and Avaceratops.
