Nasutoceratops in a Tropical Cretaceous Forest coloring pages

 Welcome to my free coloring pages blog.

Today's new drawing is from a horned dinosaur found in the Grand Staircase National Monument.

It is called Nasutoceratops! 

Nasutoceratops in a Tropical Cretaceous Forest

(New drawing)

Nasutoceratops is one of the many new discoveries in the Grand Staircase National Monument in Southern Utah.  We went there last week.  This was a very impressive animal.  It had horns that curved out like a modern bull.  It was one of the Ceratopsian or horned dinosaurs.  It lived in what back then was not a desert as it is now.  Back then, in the Cretaceous Period, this part of Utah was a tropical forest bordering an ocean.  It was more like Hawaii than Southern Utah is now.  

Nasutoceratops means Big Nosed Horned Face.  It had a particularly big nose or snout compared with most other Ceratopsian dinosaurs.  Nasutoceratops had no nose horn but it did have large brow horns that curved outward then pointed front... again... like a modern bovine bull.  (male cow)  Nasutoceratops was about 15 feet long or just over 4.5 meters long.  It weighed around 3400 lbs. or about 1.7 tons... or 1.5 metric tonnes.  The skull alone was 4.9 feet long or about 1.5 meters long.  So this was a big herbivore.  

It lived around 75 million years ago.  I will post later some photos from what it looks like now at the part of the world where this dinosaur lived.  It is a rather spectacular desert now.   The visitor's center at the monument has a great display of Nasutoceratops, Kosmosaurus, Diabloceratops, and Protoceratops skulls.  

The Pterosaur in this new drawing is of a yet-to-be-named species.  It DID exist in the same area and at the same time.  So far only the Pterosaur's ulna (forearm bone) has been found in the Grand Staircase National Monument.  But the size of the bone tells paleontologists that this flying reptile was quite large with a wingspan of around 4.5 meters or about 15 feet wide.  It may have been a type of Pteranodon or maybe more closely related to Cryodrakon.   

NOTE:  This drawing, in printable form, is found by clicking on the button labeled "Paleontology" then scroll down to the bottom of the Mesozoic Era list.   Click on the title and you get the printable version of the drawing.  Have fun coloring!   

FINAL NOTE:  I drew this dinosaur previously... but today's drawing is more detailed and actually a better drawing.  But below is the drawing from a previous post.  It is not quite as good, but it does show the curved shape of the horns better.  

Nasutoceratops

(Older drawing)