Sinocephale
Name:
Sinocephale
(Chinese head).
Phonetic: Sy-no-sef-ah-lay.
Named By: David C. Evans, Caleb M. Brown,
Hailu You & Nicol�s E. Campione - 2021.
Synonyms: Stegoceras bexelli, Troodon
bexelli..
Classification: Chordata, Dinosauria,
Ornithischia, Pachycephalosauria, Pachycephalosauridae,
Pachycephalosaurinae.
Species: S. bexelli (type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Uncertain due to lack of remains.
Known locations: China, Inner Mongolia -
Ulansuhai Formation?
Time period: Late Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Partial remains including
plaster casts of original fossils now lost.
Sinocephale
fossils originally started as being assigned as a species of Troodon
back in 1953 when similarity between the teeth of Troodon
and
other pachycephalosaurs.
When the pachycephalosaurs and troodonts
were realised to be very different kinds of dinosaurs, material of
Sinocephale was then associated with the
pachycephalosaur Stegoceras
in 1964. The validity of these fossils belonging to Stegoceras
was
repeatedly called into question over the remainder of the twentieth
century, but things were not easy because the original holotype was
lost after it was returned to China. Fortunately however that was not
the end of the story. Plaster casts of the original holotype fossil
were made before it was sent back to China, and upon the rediscovery
of the plaster casts a new study could finally be made. In 2021
the fossils casts were used to identify a new genus, Sinocephale.
As
mentioned above Sinocephale is a genus of
pachycephalosaurid dinosaur
that lived in south-east Asia during the late Cretaceous. There is a
question mark over to the exact time that Sinocephale
lived, due
mostly to the uncertain nature of Ulansuhai Formation which has been
interpreted as being of varying ages by many different authors. The
describing authors of Sinocephale in 2021
however considered the
Ulansuhai Formation to be before the Cenomanian period, maybe the
Turonian period. If this is correct, then Sinocephale
at the time
of the genus description is maybe the oldest pachycephalosaurid
dinosaur known.
Sinocephale
like other pachycephalosaurs was a herbivore and a browser of low
growing vegetation. Sinocephale would have also
had a dome shaped
skull though much of this part is still missing, even from the
plaster casts which only copied the available skull material originally
available. However the back of the parietal bone did seem to have a
recessed groove which would mean that the head of this Sinocephale
would have been roughly heart shaped when viewed from above.
Further reading
- Fossil reptiles from Mongolia and Kansu. Reports from the
Scientific Expedition to the North-western Provinces of China under
Leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. - VI. Vertebrate Palaeontology
6. The Sino-Swedish Expedition Publication. 37:1–113. - B.
Bohlin - 1953.
- Fossilium Catalogus I: Animalia Pars 105. Ornithischia
(Supplementum I), IJsel Pers, Deventer, 80 pp. - O.
Kuhn - 1964.
- Description and revised diagnosis of Asia's first recorded
pachycephalosaurid, Sinocephale bexelli gen.
nov., from the Upper
Cretaceous of Inner Mongolia, China. - Canadian Journal of Earth
Sciences. e–First (10): 981–992. - David C. Evans,
Caleb M. Brown, Hailu You & Nicol�s E. Campione -
2021.
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