Diabloceratops

Phylogeny: Dinosauria > Ornithischia > Genasauria > Neornithischia > Cerapoda > Marginocephalia > Ceratopsia > Neoceratopsia > Coronosauria > Ceratopsoidea > Ceratopsidae > Centrosaurinae

Overview: Diabloceratops was a medium-sized ceratopsid dinosaur from what is now Utah. The fossils of the animal date back to over eighty million years ago, which makes it one of the earliest confirmed members of the Ceratopsidae – the ceratopsian lineage leading to Triceratops and its ilk. As one would expect, Diabloceratops is also one of the most “primitive” of the ceratopsids, though it has enough distinct features to classify it. Scientists usually place it as one of the most basal known members of the subfamily Centrosaurinae. It was closer to dinosaurs like Styracosaurus or Centrosaurus than it was to the chasmosaurine ceratopsids like Triceratops. Most of the later and better known centrosaurines tended to have little or no brow horns, but long nasal horns or other such structures on the snout. Diabloceratops, like many early centrosaurines, lacked a nasal horn and had relatively long, curving brow horns over each eye.

While its horn arrangement was different than that of later centrosaurines, Diabloceratops did share the same deep, beaked snout. Some speculate that centrosaurines were less selective feeders than the narrow-snouted chasmosaurines. Centrosaurines also tended to have shorter frills, which we can see on Diabloceratops itself. Its frill was not only short, but also fairly narrow and bore large openings (covered with skin in life). The animal’s most famous feature was the pair of long, outwardly curved hornlets at the top of its frill. Described in 2010, those hornlets would inspire its generic name – “devil horned face”. These horns and hornlets probably doubled as display and defensive features. Diabloceratops was in need of defense, as it lived in the same time and region as the early tyrannosaurid Lythronax, both being known from the Wahweap Formation. The same formation also contains hadrosaur, ankylosaur and more ceratopsid fossils.