SEMLOHE 28

The Koreaceratops moved through the water occasionally through the form of its tail. An international team of investigators confirmed today that several bones found in 2008 in South Korea are of a type of dinosaur family ceratopsians hitherto unknown, who lived in the area 103 million years ago.


The dinosaur, herbivorous and belonging to the Cretaceous period, Koreaceratops has been named in honor of their country of origin by South Korean researchers, Japanese and Americans on the team, local news agency Yonhap.

The remains of this dinosaur were discovered by chance by an employee of the South Korean city of Hwaseong in Gyeonggi Province, in a rock containing bones of the hip and tail together, something that rarely happens.
Ceratopsians were herbivorous dinosaurs with bony jaws and beaks of birds similar to that extended especially in the U.S., but whose fossils have also been found in Mongolia, China and Japan.

According to research results published in the German scientific journal Naturwissenschaften, this was a bipedal dinosaur about five feet in length, with a semi-aquatic life. The Koreaceratops relatively small, which helped the tail plane to move in the water.

The discovery of this new type of dinosaur supports the theory that ceratopsians were originally from Asia, but reached its peak in the Cretaceous in what is now North America.