Episode 72 is all about Bagaceratops, a small ceratopsian that would make a great pet.

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In this episode, we discuss:

• The dinosaur of the day: Bagaceratops
• Name means “small-horned face”
• Fossils found in the 1970s in the Gobi Desert, as part of a joint expedition with Mongolian and Polish scientists
• Described in 1975 by Teresa Maryanska and Halszka Osmólska
• Found 5 complete and 20 partial crania (skulls from different ages, juveniles and adults, and different sizes)
• Type species is Bagaceratops rozhdestvenskyi
• Species name is in honor of Anatoly Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky, a Russian paleontologist
• A juvenile Bagaceratops was renamed Bagaceratops in 2000 by Paul Sereno. It was first named Protoceratops kozlowskii and then renamed in 1990 to Breviceratops kozlowskii
• Closely related to Protoceratops
• Looked similar to Protoceratops, except for the shape of its head (Bagaceratops had a triangular shaped head)
• Bagaceratops lived millions of years after Protoceratops but is considered to be more primitive
• Primitive (even though it lived later), and small, like early ceratopsians
• Like Protoceratops, had a beak, no brow horns, and a small horn on its snout
• Had a small frill, and a triangular skull
• About 3.3 ft (1m) long and weighed 50 lb (22 kg)
• Quadrupedal
• Front legs were shorter than hind legs
• Herbivore, ate ferns, cycads and conifers
• Used its parrot-like beak to bite off leaves
• Also had cheek teeth, to grind up plants
• Can see Bagaceratops at the Paleobiological Institute in Warsaw, Poland
• Bagaceratops is part of Ceratopsia
• Ceratopsia is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in North America and Asia in the Cretaceous
• They had parrot-like beaks and cheek teeth to eat fiberous vegetation
• They were ornithiscians
• Also had a frill (used for defense, regulating body temperature, attracting mates, or signaling danger)
• Probably traveled in herds and could then stampede if threatened
• Fun fact: Garfield County in Montana is a very important area within the Hell Creek formation with several huge T-rex, Triceratops, and other dinosaur finds. And despite having a land area 15 times the size of New York City’s five boroughs (Staten Island, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan) it has almost exactly 1/100,000th the population density with only 1,280 people.