CHINA - Cousin of Horned Dinosaur Triceratops Discovered

The remains of a tiny version of the huge triceratops dinosaur - no bigger than a small dog - have been unearthed in fossil beds in China. The discovery pushes the origins of the popular frilled, horned dinosaur back in time by tens of millions of years.

The tiny plant-eater - named Hualianceratops - lived approximately 160 million years ago during the early Late Jurassic period. It would be another 100 million years before the huge, horned triceratops appeared on the scene.

Catherine Forster is a paleontologist at George Washington University in Washington who helped identify the remains of the mini dinosaur, which - unlike triceratops - had no horns.

Fossils of another triceratops cousin from the same era, a larger dinosaur named Yinlong, were discovered in the same area of China in 2002, although paleontologists didn't know then what they had until they compared the two sets of bones.

Only when they found Hualianceratops did scientists realize they were getting to the roots of what evolved into triceratops, which Forster says had "crazy head stuff" that began to appear in the smaller creature.

Forster says she looks forward to making other dinosaur discoveries.

"Absolutely. And we have a better idea of the timing of that diversification," said Forster. "We know that it had already happened by the early part of the late Jurassic. So if we go back into older rocks we might be able to find older members of these lineages and trace it back to the beginning of ceratopsias."

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