Notoceratops (meaning "southern horned face") is the name given to a dubious genus of dinosaur based on a toothless dentary (now lost) from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia (in Argentina), probably dating from the Campanian and about 77 million years old.
Discovery and species[]
In 1918 Augusto Tapia named the type species Notoceratops Bonarellii.[1] The generic name is derived from Greek notos, "the South", keras, "horn" and ops, "face". The specific name honours Guido Bonarelli who advised Tapia in his study of the find. By present conventions the epithet is spelled bonarellii, thus without a capital B. In many later publications the specific name is misspelled "bonarelli", with a single "i", from the incorrect assumption it would be derived from a Latinised "Bonarell~ius". The fossil, found near the Lago Colhué Huapí in Chubut, was first described by Friedrich von Huene in 1929.
Phylogeny[]
Originally referred as a ceratopsian by Tapia in 1918, it was later dismissed because no other members of that group were known from the Southern Hemisphere. However, the recent discovery of another possible ceratopsian, Serendipaceratops, from Australia could change this view on Ceratopsia. Notoceratops has since been considered a nomen dubium and may have been a hadrosaur instead. An analysis published by Tom Rich et al. in 2014, focused in the validity of the another supposed southern ceratopsian, Serendipaceratops, also examined the published material from Notoceratops and they concluded that the holotype had ceratopsians features and probably the genus would be valid.