JUVENILE PROTOCERATOPS SKULL
Protoceratops andrewsi
Cretaceous, Campanian stage
Central Asia
Protoceratops was originally discovered during the highly-publicized American Museum of Natural History expeditions to Mongolia during the 1920s, led by Roy Chapman Andrews. These expeditions produced the first dinosaur eggs ever found, along with a fantastic variety of complete skeletons and skulls of previously unknown dinosaurs, which inspired the imaginations of the American people and the world, and produced record viewings of the exhibits at the American Museum. The Protoceratops was a primitive Neoceratopsian, predecessors of the giant horned dinosaurs like Triceratops. They grew up to six feet in length, but this superb skull comes from one of the young, with fine bone texture and bleached white coloring, in contrast to the sandy red matrix filling the interior, and the pale yellow enamel of the peg-like teeth. It is crowned with the spectacular double loop of the frill bones and boasts terrific three-dimensionality throughout, down to the narrow, tapered beak. A first-class and highly aesthetic specimen, it measures 11 inches long, presented on a metal display stand, and stands 14 inches high overall.