Ceratopsian Month #22 – Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna

An illustration of the extinct ceratopsid dinosaur Coahuilaceratops, shown laying down with its back partially turned towards the viewer. It's a chunky quadrupedal dinosaur with a parrot-like beak, a thick nose horn, long thick brow horns, and a large rectangular bony frill. It's depicted with speculative quills over its back and tail, and it's colored green with a darker head and stripes on its tail, with red and white spots on its face and frill.

Coahuilaceratops (“Coahuila horned face”) was the first ceratopsid discovered in Mexico, living about 72-71 million years ago. Known from partial skull material and other fragmentary remains, it’s estimated to have measured around 5-6m in length (16′4″-19′8″)

It seems to have been an early member of a branch of the chasmosaur evolutionary tree that included animals more closely related to Chasmosaurus than to Triceratops. (This grouping doesn’t currently have an official name, but similarly to @a-dinosaur-a-day I’ll be referring to them as the “Chasmosaurini”.)

Its brow horns were proportionally huge for its size, each reaching up to 1.2m long (4′) – some of the largest of all known ceratopsids.

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