Aquilops was a ceratopsian from middle of the Early Cretaceous, approximately 109 to 104 million years ago, during the Albian, in what is now North America, becoming the oldest neoceratopsian on this continent.
Description[]
Restoration
The skull is 83.7 mm long. The holotype is possibly not from a full-grown individual. A comparison with related species indicates it might have been at 60% of its adult length. Wedel estimated the total body length of Aquilops at 59 cm and its weight at 1.5 kg.
The authors established some unique traits. The rostral, the bone core of the snout beak, curves downwards and has an arched keel on its top with a bump on the front. In front of the tooth row the upper jaw rim is over its total length concave in side view. The skull opening, the antorbital fenestra, is twice as long as it is tall and has a pointed rear, below the eye socket
Discovery and naming[]
Restored skull
In 1997, paleontologist Scott Madsen found the single fossil, a partial skull, in Carbon County in southern Montana. While preparing the specimen, at first assumed to be of Zephyrosaurus, he discovered that it was a species new to science. In 2014 the type species Aquilops americanus was named and described by Andrew Farke, W. Desmond Maxwell, Richard L. Cifelli, and Matt J. Wedel. The generic name is derived from Latin aquila, "eagle", and Greek ὤψ, ops, "face", in reference to the beaked snout. The specific name americanus refers to the fact that the species represents the first unequivocal very basal neoceratopsian found in America.
The holotype, OMNH 34557 , was found in a layer of the Cloverly Formation, which dates to the mid-late Albian. It consists of a skull with the lower jaw, of a subadult individual. The back of the head and the palate are the main missing parts. The specimen was found during a 1997 expedition supported by the National Geographic Society and led by Cifelli.
Classification[]
Lower jaw
Cloverly formation environment with Gobiconodon pursuing juvenile Aquilops while adults attempt to protect them.
Aquilops was placed in the Neoceratopsia. A cladistic analysis showed that it was positioned rather basal, below Leptoceratops in the evolutionary tree, with only Liaoceratops being more basal. A more derived position, e.g. as a leptoceratopsid or a protoceratopsid, was less likely; it was improbable that it was a ceratopsoid. The fact that the holotype was a subadult might have distorted these results because juvenile individuals often show basal traits.
However, after correcting for traits that might change during ontogeny, the resulting tree was basically the same. The ceratopsians more derived than psittacosaurids, called neoceratopsians, evolved in Asia: the presence of a basal neoceratopsian in North America was seen as an indication for a late Early Cretaceous migration event, the ancestors of Aquilops invading from Asia. Two later such events would have occurred in the early Late Cretaceous.
Appearance in other media[]
Jurassic Park[]
In scrapped concept art, a hybrid of Pachycephalosaurus, Ouranosaurus, and Aquilops appeared. It is unknown if Aquilops was meant to appear in Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, as Ouranosaurus did.
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