Outline: a typical ornithopod
Malefica
"witch"
Type species Malefica deckerti
- Lived
- 84 to 72 million years ago, Late Cretaceous
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Group
- Ornithopods, Hadrosauridae
- Found in
- United States
- Named by
- Prieto-Márquez and Wagner 2023
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
80 million years ago
Field notes
About Malefica
What it was like
Malefica was an early duckbill, a plant eater with a broad beak and grinding teeth. It is known from part of a skull.
Its world
It lived in the Late Cretaceous, in what is now Texas. It comes from the Aguja Formation, a coastal land shared with the horned Agujaceratops, the duckbill Kritosaurus and the armored Panoplosaurus.
How it was found
Prieto-Márquez and Wagner named Malefica in 2023. The type species is Malefica deckerti.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Hadrosauridae
Sources: WikidataNamed in: A. Prieto-Márquez and J. R. Wagner. 2023. A new ‘duck-billed’ dinosaur (Ornithischia: Hadrosauridae) from the upper Campanian of Texas points to a greater diversity of early hadrosaurid offshoots. Cretaceous Research 143:105416