Off the wire
Feature: Overseas Chinese student's memorable moments of 2015 in Japan  • Xi wishes a good beginning in 2016  • Iran's IRGC denies firing rockets near U.S. warship in Persian Gulf  • Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian in car-ramming attack near West Bank city  • More train trips forecast for 2016 New Year holiday  • Indian PM stresses need for political solution in Nepal  • Weather information for Asia-Pacific cities  • 2nd LD-Writethru: Shanghai stock index gains 9.4 percent in 2015  • Indian stocks close higher  • Indian stocks close higher  
You are here:   Home

China identifies new dinosaur with bow-shaped hip bone

Xinhua, December 31, 2015 Adjust font size:

Paleontologists in east China's Shandong Province have named a new dinosaur species in the genus Leptoceratops after its unique hip bone.

The partial skeleton of Ischioceratops zhuchengensis, which lived during the Cretaceous Period, the last dinosaur era, was found in the world's largest dinosaur fossil field at Zhucheng, according to the local dinosaur research center

Leptoceratops are small, herbivorous dinosaurs that walked on four legs but could probably stand or walk on their hind legs alone. The new species features a recurve bow-shaped ischium (back and lower part of the hip bone), which has an obturator process in the middle part and an axehead-shaped expansion at the distal end.

The discovery has been published in the U.S. journal PLOS ONE.

More than ten new dinosaur species have been discovered and named at Zhucheng. Endi