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China's dinosaur 'graveyard' yields triceratops' cousin

7 January 2009

One of the world’s biggest dinosaur graves, in China, has yielded a key discovery: the 2-metre-long skull of a ceratopsid, a close relative of the triceratops. It is the first evidence that ceratopsids lived beyond North America.

Since March 2008, over 7600 fossils have been found at the site in Zhucheng city, says Zhao Zijin at Beijing’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. The bones are thought to date from the Late Cretaceous.

Ceratopsids were four-legged rhino-like herbivores whose huge skulls bore horns and distinctive bony frills. Their remains had been found only in Alaska, western Canada, and the western…

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