Outline: a typical pachycephalosaur
Prenocephale
PREE-noh-SEF-ah-lee
"sloping head"
- Lived
- 84 to 66 million years ago, Late Cretaceous
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Length
- about 2.4 m (8 ft)
- Group
- Pachycephalosaurs
- Found in
- Mongolia and United States
- Named by
- Maryańska and Osmólska 1974
Size comparison
To scale
Scale in metersOutline: typical pachycephalosaur shape
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
75 million years ago
Field notes
About Prenocephale
What it was like
Prenocephale was a small dome-headed dinosaur, about 2.4 meters (8 feet) long. Its skull was topped with a smooth, rounded dome of thick bone, with a row of small knobs along the back and sides.
Scientists still debate what the dome was for. It may have been used for display, or for pushing contests between rivals.
Its world
It lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Mongolia. Its skull comes from the Nemegt Formation, which also produced the tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus, the ostrich-like Gallimimus and the huge Deinocheirus and Therizinosaurus.
How it was found
Maryańska and Osmólska named Prenocephale in 1974. Its skull is one of the best preserved of any pachycephalosaur.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Eupachycephalosauria
Sources: WikidataNamed in: T. Maryańska and H. Osmólska. 1974. Pachycephalosauria, a new suborder of ornithischian dinosaurs. Palaeontologia Polonica 30:45-102