page_title: Mercuriceratops
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Mercuriceratops / Description
caption_attribution_description: Mercuriceratops.
context_page_description: Mercuriceratops is an extinct genus of herbivorous chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada and Montana, United States. It contains a single species, Mercuriceratops gemini.
context_section_description: The describers estimated that Mercuriceratops was about the same size as Chasmosaurus. The holotype squamosal has a length of 793 millimetres (31.2 in; 2.602 ft).
  Ryan et al. (2014) established a single autapomorphy, unique derived trait, of Mercuriceratops. The squamosal possesses a rear branch that is narrowed and rod-shaped instead of being blunt, triangular and tapering, the normal chasmosaurine form, or broadly rounded as with Triceratops. The narrowing is caused by an indentation of the outer rim of the squamosal.
  The squamosal carries at least six, and perhaps as many as eight, episquamosals, osteoderms on the frill rim. Based on the narrow form of the squamosal, it was deduced that the inner shield bones, the parietals, were very wide and pierced by enormous parietal fenestrae.
  Mercuriceratops was placed in the Chasmosaurinae. It is the oldest chasmosaurine known from Canada, and the first pre-Maastrichtian ceratopsid to have been collected on both sides of the Canada–US border. Though the profile of the Mercuriceratops squamosal suggests it was a transitional form between older rectangular squamosals of centrosaurine shape and later triangular squamosals, the describers rejected this hypothesis because juvenile centrosaurines do not show such a transitional phase during their ontogeny.
caption: Restoration
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