Foraminacephale
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Foraminacephale Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 77–73 Ma |
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| Specimen CMN 1423 | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | †Ornithischia |
| Family: | †Pachycephalosauridae |
| Genus: |
†Foraminacephale Schott & Evans, 2016 |
| Species: | †F. brevis |
| Binomial name | |
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Foraminacephale brevis (Lambe, 1918) |
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Foraminacephale (meaning "foramina head") is a genus of pachycephalosaurid dinosaur from Late Cretaceous (Campanian stage) deposits of Canada.
Foraminacephale, as a pachycephalosaurid, was a small, bipedal herbivore with a thickened dome on its skull. In Foraminacephale, the top surface of the dome is punctuated by many small pits, the eponymous foramina; the dome itself consists of a large, central lobe with a sloped frontal half, and two smaller lateral lobes at the front. The squamosal bone forms a tall bar of completely smooth bone underneath the dome, save for six bony nodes that line the bottom edge of the dome and an additional "corner" node just below. These features differentiate Foraminacephale from all other pachycephalosaurids.
Unlike Stegoceras, Hanssuesia, and Colepiocephale, the parietal bone of Foraminacephale (which constitutes the back part of the dome) projects backwards and downwards over the base of the skull. Two traits also differentiate Foraminacephale from Sphaerotholus and Prenocephale: there are prominent grooves between the central lobe and the lateral lobes, and the opening of the temporal bone is slit-like.
As with Stegoceras, the wide age range present in specimens of Foraminacephale allows for analysis of the ontogeny, or growth, of the dome. Measurements of 27 different points on 21 Foraminacephale skulls showed that the dome became proportionally taller with age, but did not become significantly wider. Histology of the specimens showed that the domes became less porous with age - the smallest specimen's skull was 1.67% empty space, while the largest specimen's skull was 0.25% empty space. Generally, the frontal part of the dome was more porous than the parietal part.
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