Protoceratops Facts for Kids
PROH-toh-SAIR-uh-tops · its name means “first horned face”
A small cousin of Triceratops with a frill but no big horns.
Protoceratops had a bony frill and a beak. It had no big horns. It lived in the Gobi Desert and ate plants.
Protoceratops was a cousin of Triceratops, but it had no big horns, only a small bump on its nose. It had a bony frill at the back of its head, a beak like a parrot's and four sturdy legs. Its name means first horned face, because scientists saw it as an early kind of horned-face dinosaur.
Protoceratops lived in the sandy lands of the Gobi Desert. So many skeletons have been found that scientists can see how it grew from a hatchling to a grown-up, and its frill grew bigger as it got older. It laid eggs in nests, and scientists have found nests with its eggs and babies. One famous fossil shows a Protoceratops and a Velociraptor buried together.
Every dinosaur number is scientists’ best guess from bones, so each one says where it came from.
How big was Protoceratops?
Protoceratops in numbers
| Length (nose to tail) | 5.9 ft1.8 m1scientists' estimate |
|---|---|
| Height at the hips | no checked number yet |
| Weight | no checked number yet |
| When it lived | 80 million years ago80 million years ago2from the Million Years Before Present column of a table in an NPS lesson-plan PD |
| What it ate | low, tough plants |
| Fossils found in | the Gobi Desert in Mongolia and China |
| What kind | a ceratopsian: a horned, frilled plant-eater |
Wow!
- Its name means first horned face, but it had no big horns.
- So many were found that scientists can see how it grew up.
- One famous fossil shows it buried together with a Velociraptor.
🦴 Protoceratops’s bones
Books about Protoceratops, free at the library
Ask a grown-up to tap the button: it shows where to borrow a book about Protoceratops for free.
Where was the land back then?
The continents were in different places when Protoceratops lived, 80 million years ago. Open Planet Earth, pick Drifting continents, and slide back in time to see where the land was.
Its neighbours in time
Where these numbers come from
- Wikidata, from the Natural History Museum's Dino Directory, checked 30 October 2026.
- National Park Service, checked 30 October 2026.
- Wikidata, Protoceratops (Q14506), checked 30 October 2026.
To read more: the Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory (see also, not copied).