Endocranial morphology of Auroraceratops sp. (Dinosauria: Ceratopsia) from the Early Cretaceous of Gansu Province, China

ABSTRACT

Fossils of Auroraceratops are abundant and found in high concentrations within the Mazongshan area of northwestern China. As small basal Neoceratopsia discovered from the Lower Cretaceous, its general anatomy is well known; however, the endocranial morphology of this genus has never been formally described before. Here, we selected a well-preserved skull which belongs to Auroraceratops sp. and used a high-resolution CT scan to reconstruct its three-dimensional, virtual endocast in order to illustrate the endocranial structures in detail. Our study provides the first description of the endocranial anatomy of Auroraceratops and compares it with other relevant ceratopsian taxa. Our result shows that for a basal Neoceratopsia, the endocranial morphology of Auroraceratops is closer to that of non-neoceratopsian ceratopsian Psittacosaurus than the more derived neoceratopsians, such as Pachyrhinosaurus, which provides new insight into the endocranial characters of basal Neoceratopsia.

KEYWORDS:

• Auroraceratops
• cranial endocast
• computed tomography scan
• endocranial morphology
• three-dimensional reconstruction

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Gansu Geological Museum for providing access to the specimen, and the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences for supporting CT scans. We would also like to thank Claire Bullar (University of Bristol, UK) for valuable discussion. We are appreciative of the editor and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments that improved this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences [Grant Number: XDB26000000]; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Numbers: 41688103, 41872021 and 41472020].