Labels:text | font | paper | document OCR: Protoceratops ("first horned face") was discovered by an American expedition to Mongolia in the early 1920s. The numerous skeletons belonged to four-legged plant-eaters with oversized heads, bony neck frills, sharp, shearing cheek teeth, and parrotlike beaks. Some of these features identified Protoceratops as an early Asian model for the huge, horned dinosaurs of North America, the ceratopsids. Protoceratops was a solidly built quadruped (four-legged animal) that was heavier, but no longer, than a tall human. Protoceratops gave its name to the protoceratopsids, a whole "new" family of dinosaurs. HARSH ENVIRONMENT Protoceratops inhabited a hostile region of hot, dry, windswept sand dunes. The climate comprised a rainy season, during which water filled lakes and streams, and a dry season, when the rains stopped and most of the surface water evaporated. Drought-resistant plants were able to thrive in this harsh environment, and it seems likely that Protoceratops' massive jaws, sharp beak, and shearing teeth evolved to slice up the tough-leaved vegetation. This solidly built protoceratopsid probably lived in herds that wandered over a fairly small home range and came back to the same breeding grounds year after year.
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