page_title: Coronosaurus
section_title: Discovery and naming
hierarchical_section_title: Coronosaurus / Discovery and naming
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: コロノサウルス・ブリンクマニ（フィリップカリー博物館所蔵）
context_page_description: Coronosaurus is a genus of centrosaurine ceratopsian dinosaurs which lived in the Late Cretaceous, in the middle Campanian stage. Its remains, two bone beds, were discovered by Phillip J. Currie in the Oldman Formation of Alberta, Canada, and its type and only species, Coronosaurus brinkmani, was first described in 2005, as a new species within the genus Centrosaurus. Later studies questioned the presence of a direct relationship, and in 2012 it was named as a separate genus. Coronosaurus means "crowned lizard", coming from "corona", Latin for crown, and "sauros", Greek for lizard; this name refers to the unique, crown-like shape of the horns on the top of its frill.
  Like other ceratopsids, Coronosaurus had a large frill and horns on its head. These include a small pair of brow horns over its eyes, a large nasal horn on its snout, and, unique among ceratopsians, irregular, spiky bone masses on its frill. Growing up to around 5 metres long and 2 tonnes in weight, it was mid-sized for its kind.
context_section_description: Coronosaurus is known from two bone beds, BB 138 and MRR BB, located in the upper unit of the Oldman Formation, of the Belly River Group, excavated by Philip Currie between 1996 and 2000. Most of the ceratopsid material, if not all, from BB 138 in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, and the MRR BB near Warner, Alberta, was referred to C. brinkmani. Bone bed 138 is located approximately fifty kilometres (31 miles) from Brooks, Alberta, in the Oldman Formation and 14.6 metres (48 ft) below the contact with the Dinosaur Park Formation. The MRR BB located approximately one hundred and eighty kilometres (110 miles) southwest of BB 138, is also from the Oldman Formation. These bone beds date to the middle Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous period. Both the specimens and the precise localities are archived at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, in Drumheller, Alberta.
  Michael J. Ryan and Anthony P. Russell described and named the type species, then as Centrosaurus brinkmani, in 2005. Later studies, however, did not recover a monophyletic clade with the genus' type species Centrosaurus apertus in phylogenetic analyses. Due to this, Ryan, David C. Evans and Kieran M. Shepherd erected the genus Coronosaurus for the species in 2012. The generic name is derived from the Latin corona, meaning "crown" in reference to the multiple occurrences of extra epiparietals that cover the posterior margin of its parietal, giving it a crown-like appearance, and saurus (Latinized from Greek sauros), meaning "lizard". The specific name brinkmani honors Donald Brinkman, for his research in palaeoecology of the Late Cretaceous environments of Alberta. In 2020, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Ryan was asked about the naming of the dinosaur, and stated he came up with it because its frill ornamentation made him think of the corona of the sun. He also stated his fellow students at the time had jokingly called it ‘broccoli-ceratops’.
  The holotype of Coronosaurus is TMP 2002.68.1. It is a large adult-sized parietal with an almost complete midline bar and a partial posterior bar with left P1–P3 processes and the partially eroded right P1-P2. The specimen lacks the extreme anterior margin of the midline bar that forms the posterior wall of the frontal fontanelle and the paper-thin lateral margins that define the medial margins of the supraorbital foramina. Other significant specimens according to Ryan & Russell (2005) include TMP 2002.68.3 (a parietal), TMP 2002.68.10 (a postorbital), and TMP 2002.68.5 (supraorbitals).
caption: Left side view of skull cast
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