Diceratops
dye-SERR-ah-tops /daɪˈsɛrətɒps/
Synonym of Triceratops
two-horned face
- di · Greek · two
- keras · Greek · horn
- ops · Greek · face
The name combines Greek words for "two", "horn" and "face". Richard Swann Lull chose it in 1905 for a horned dinosaur skull that seemed to have only two brow horns and no nose horn. This set it apart from the three-horned Triceratops. The nose-horn difference is now thought to be an abnormality in that one skull.
- Named by
- Lull
- Year named
- 1905
- Period
- Late Cretaceous
- Stage
- Maastrichtian
- Found in
- Lance Formation, Wyoming, USA
Diceratops is a ceratopsid named from a single skull, and the type species is D. hatcheri. It was long treated as a separate genus. Many researchers now regard it as a Triceratops, either an aberrant individual or a Triceratops species. The name was also reported to be preoccupied. Lull proposed the replacement name Diceratus in 1933. I am not fully certain of that detail.