Diabloceratops

Diabloceratops was an ancient and primitive centrosaurine ceratopsid that inhabited the coastal wetlands of southern Utah around eighty million years ago. Stretching around five metres in length and weighing an estimated one and a half tonnes, this robust quadraped was about as heavy as a modern hippopotamus. Recovered from the Wahweap Formation, Diabloceratops earned its name from the fearsome, upward-curving horns that emerged from the top corners of its bony neck frill, giving the animal a devilish appearance. It also retained long brow horns above its eyes and a relatively low, blunt nose horn, a combination characteristic of early horned dinosaurs. As one of the oldest known members of the Ceratopsidae family, Diabloceratops provides vital evolutionary clues regarding how the famous frills and defensive horns split into the distinct Centrosaurinae and Chasmosaurinae lineages.

It sported two long, backward-projecting spikes on its neck frill that gave it a devil-like silhouette.

Where and when

Diabloceratops lived in the Late Cretaceous, from 80.5 to 79.5 million years ago (Campanian age). Its remains come from United States, in the Wahweap Formation.

The numbers

Length 5 m (estimates run from 4.5 to 5.5 m). Mass about 1.6 t. Hip height about 1.8 m. That is 2.9 human-lengths, or 0.45 of a double-decker bus. These are estimates from partial skeleton; fields marked estimated by the site are length, mass, hip height.

Compare Diabloceratops with a bus Place on the timeline