Types of Dinosaurs

Names of Dinosaurs & Dinosaur Information
Dinosaur Name:

Protoceratops

- Pronunciation: pro-toe-SAIR-uh-tops
- Translation: First Horned Face
- Order: Ornithischia
- Suborder: Marginocephalia
- Infraorder: Ceratopsia
- Family: Protoceratopsidae
- Height: 2.6 feet (0.8 meters)
- Weight: 900 pounds (408 kg)
- Length: 6 feet (1.8 meters)
- Period: Late Cretaceous
- Description: Herbivore, Quadrupedal
- Notes: Discovered in China and Mongolia, this forerunner of thehorned dinosaurs was the first dinosaur known through every stage of life. Potato-shaped eggs, found in the 1920's by Roy Chapman Andrews, were attributed to Protoceratops because of the great abundance of Protoceratops bones throughout the same formation. The unusual theropod Oviraptor was discoveredadjacent to a clutch of these eggs and it was presumed that it wastrying to steal and eat the eggs. The recent discovery of an egg,identical to the eggs attributed to Protoceratops, with an Oviraptorembryo, indicates that these eggs belonged to Oviraptor. While these were the first eggs found in Mongolia the first eggs everfound were discovered in France and described in 1859 asbelonging to the sauropod Hypselosaurus.However, withoutan embryo, no egg can be definititely attributed to any animal.