First Horned Dinosaur from South Korea Discovered
ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2010) — Scientists from South Korea, the United States and Japan analyzed fossil evidence found in South Korea and published research describing a new horned dinosaur. The newly identified genus, Koreaceratops hwaseongensis, lived about 103 million years ago during the late Early Cretaceous period. The specimen is the first ceratopsian dinosaur from the Korean peninsula. The partial skeleton includes a significant portion of the animal's backbone, hip bone, partial hind limbs and a nearly complete tail.
Artist's impression of koreaceratops hwaseongensis. (Credit: Copyright Julius T. Csotonyi)
Results from the analysis of the specimen were published in the 18 November 2010 online edition of the journal Naturwissenchaften: The Science of Nature.
The Koreaceratops hwaseongensis is named for Korea and Hwaseong City, which yielded the fossil. It was discovered in 2008 in a block of rock along the Tando Basin reservoir. It is one of the first articulated dinosaurs known from Korea.
"This is a rare find," said Michael J. Ryan, Ph.D., curator and head of Vertebrate Paleontology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who co-authored the research. "Fossils of dinosaurs have not typically been found in this region, whereas evidence of dinosaur eggs and footprints occur more commonly. This specimen is significant because it fills in a missing 20 million-year gap in the fossil record between the origin of these dinosaurs in Asia and their first appearance in North America."
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NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN
DOI: 10.1007/s00114-010-0739-y
The first ceratopsian dinosaur from South Korea
Yuong-Nam Lee, Michael J. Ryan and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi
Abstract
In 2008, a new basal neoceratopsian was discovered in the Tando beds (Albian) of Tando Basin in South Korea. It represents the first ceratopsian dinosaur in the Korean peninsula and is assigned toKoreaceratops hwaseongensis gen. et sp. nov. Autapomorphies of Koreaceratops include very tall neural spines over five times higher than the associated centra in the distal caudals, and a unique astragalus divided into two fossae by a prominent craniocaudal ridge on the proximal surface. A phylogenetic analysis indicates that Koreaceratops is positioned between Archaeoceratops and all more derived neoceratopsians, and the elongation of caudal neural spines was an important derived character in non-ceratopsid neoceratopsians. The very tall caudal neural spines in Koreaceratops, Montanoceratops,Udanoceratops, Protoceratops, and Bagaceratops appear to be homoplasious, suggesting an independent adaptation, possibly for swimming. Skeletal evidence suggests that obligate quadrupedalism occurred gradually in neoceratopsians progressing from bipedal through facultative quadrupedalism, to complete quadrupedalism in Coronosauria.
Keywords Basal neoceratopsian - Koreaceratops hwaseongensis - Tando beds - Late Early Cretaceous - Hwaseong City - South Korea
Communicated by Robert Reisz
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