Dino card No. 0658 of 2,015

Foraminacephale

Say it: for-AM-in-a-SEF-ah-lee

Name means: “foramen head, referring to the many small pits on its skull dome”1

Ate: PlantsDome-headsLate Cretaceous

Foraminacephale was a tiny, dome-headed dinosaur that lived in what is now Canada. It walked on two legs and munched on plants. Its thick, bumpy skull dome might have been used for head-butting contests!1 3

Lived

84 to 72 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alberta, Canada (Dinosaur Park Formation)1 3

Food

Plants3 1

Length

1.5 m1

estimate by Gregory S. Paul in 2016

Weight

10 kg1

Artist's life restoration of Foraminacephale — How Foraminacephale may have looked, by IJReid. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

The top of its skull dome is covered in tiny pits called foramina, which give the dinosaur its name.1

Foraminacephale lived about 77 to 73 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous.1

Scientists have found skulls from babies, teenagers, and adults, showing how the dome grew taller and less spongy with age.1

Even the youngest Foraminacephale already had a slightly domed skull, unlike its relative Stegoceras which started flat.1

Micro-CT scans suggest that pachycephalosaurids like Foraminacephale may have head-butted each other.1

The dome of Foraminacephale has a large central lobe and two smaller side lobes at the front.1

Its squamosal bone forms a tall, smooth bar under the dome, lined with six bony bumps.1

Myth buster

Myth: Foraminacephale is just a young Stegoceras.

Truth: Foraminacephale is a distinct genus with a different dome shape and growth pattern, not a juvenile of Stegoceras.1 2

For dino experts

Scientific name: Foraminacephale
Named by: Schott and Evans 20173
Group: Dome-heads
Family / clade: Pachycephalosauridae3
Classification: Ornithischia > Pachycephalosauria3
Age of the rocks: 84 to 72 million years (Campanian)3
Rock formations: Dinosaur Park3
Countries: Canada3
Fossil records: 5 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: The first fossil, a nearly complete skull dome, was found in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta in 1902. It was named Stegoceras brevis by Lawrence Lambe in 1918, but in 2016 Ryan Schott and David Evans gave it the new name Foraminacephale brevis.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure whether Foraminacephale used its dome for head-butting or for display, though CT scans hint at head-butting.1

Where the facts come from

Foraminacephale (en.wikipedia.org)
Cranial variation and systematics of Foraminacephale brevis gen. nov. and the diversity of pachycephalosaurid dinosaurs (Ornithischia: Cerapoda) in the Belly River Group of Alberta, Canada | Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society | Oxford Academic (academic.oup.com)
Foraminacephale in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@dinowiki.app and we will fix it.