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Axial Skeleton of Subadult Protoceratops andrewsi from Djadokhta Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Mongolia)

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Abstract

Protoceratops andrewsi Granger and Gregory, 1923, is one of the most famous Upper Cretaceous horned dinosaurs of Central Asia. It was described from a separate skull found at Bayan Zag locality (Djadokhta formation, Mongolia). The holotype axial skeleton of this species is unknown, and its description appeared to be rather aggregated, capturing structural features of most ceratopsians from this locality. Polymorphism determined in this species is normally explained by gender, age and individual dimorphism. However, there is an opinion that P. andrewsi is a combined taxon that includes representatives of several species, but it is as yet difficult to determine the number of these species using the skull material. The study of the complete skeleton of P. andrewsi ZPAL Mg D-II/3 from the collection of Kozłowski Institute of Paleobiology, Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw, Poland), found at Bayan Zag, provided a solution to this problem. A detailed description of ZPAL Mg D-II/3 vertebrae and the study of its axial skeleton, taking into account its age and gender, revealed that this sample, most likely, was a large immature female. Comparative analysis of the vertebrae of this specimen with identical (of the same index number) vertebrae of specimens without associated skulls (PIN 3143/9 and PIN 3143/16) from the age-matched Tögrögiin Shiree locality (Mongolia), which are housed at Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia), convinced us that they belong to the same morphotype. This makes it possible to diagnose P. andrewsi from vertebrae considering the age and gender of compared specimens.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks T. Singer (University of Warsaw, Poland) for the technical processing of this material, without which this research would not have been possible, and M. Borsuk-Bialynicka and J. Dzik (Institute of Paleobiology, PAN, Poland) for their active support. Many thanks to M. Dziewiński (Institute of Paleobiology PAN, Poland) for the photographs he prepared for this work, as well as to V.B. Sukhanov and A.G. Sennikov (PIN RAS) for reviewing the manuscript, valuable advice, and comments.

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This study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project no. 20-04-00070).

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  1. Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 117647, Moscow, Russia

    V. S. Tereshchenko

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Tereshchenko, V.S. Axial Skeleton of Subadult Protoceratops andrewsi from Djadokhta Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Mongolia). Paleontol. J. 55, 1408–1457 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0031030121120030

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