''Amtocephale'' (meaning " Amtgai head") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

pachycephalosaurid Pachycephalosauria (; from Greek παχυκεφαλόσαυρος for 'thick headed lizards') is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs. Along with Ceratopsia, it makes up the clade Marginocephalia. With the exception of two species, most pachycephal ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

from early

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

(

Turonian The Turonian is, in the ICS' geologic timescale, the second age in the Late Cretaceous Epoch, or a stage in the Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 93.9 ± 0.8 Ma and 89.8 ± 1 Ma (million years ago). The Turonian is preceded b ...

Santonian The Santonian is an age in the geologic timescale or a chronostratigraphic stage. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 86.3 ± 0.7 mya (million years ago) and 83.6 ± 0.7 mya. ...

stages) deposits of southern Gobi Desert,

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

. ''Amtocephale'' is known from the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...

MPC-D 100/1203, a nearly complete frontoparietal dome of a subadult individual. It was collected from the Baynshire Formation at the Amtgai locality. ''Amtocephale'' was first named by Mahito Watabe, Khishigjaw Tsogtbaatar and Robert M. Sullivan in 2011 and the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...

is ''Amtocephale gobiensis''. The generic name combines a reference to the Amtgai site with a Greek κεφαλή, ''kephale'', "head". The specific name refers to the provenance from the Gobi. The frontoparietal dome, formed by a fusion of the frontals in front and the parietals in the back, has a length of and a maximal thickness of . The contribution to the dome length of the parietal part is exceptionally large, with a portion of 41%. ''Amtocephale'' was assigned to the Pachycephalosauridae and is perhaps the oldest pachycephalosaurid known, depending on the exact age of the formation.

References

Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia Pachycephalosaurs Gobi Desert Fossils of Mongolia Fossil taxa described in 2011 Ornithischian genera {{Cretaceous-reptile-stub

See also

References