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Triceratops skeleton at the National Museum of Natural History
The Cerapoda are a clade of the order Ornithischia. They are the sister group of the Thyreophora within the Genasauria. They are divided either into two or three groups. The first of these groups were Ornithopoda ("bird-foot"). Cerapods are united by having a thickier layer of enamel on the inside of their lower teeth. The teeth wore unevenly with chewing and developed sharp ridges that allowed cerapods to break down tougher plant food than other dinosaurs. The other two groupd were the Pachycephalosauria ("thick-headed lizards") and Ceratopsia ("horned-face"). These latter two are sometimes combined as Marginocephalia ("fringed heads") owing to their shared features which included the bony shelf they possessed on the back of the skull.
[edit] Taxonomy
- CERAPODA
- Suborder Ornithopoda
- Family Hypsilophodontidae
- Iguanodontia
- Family Hadrosauridae - (duck-billed dinosaurs)
- Heterodontosauriformes
- Family Heterodontosauridae
- Suborder Marginocephalia
- Superfamily Pachycephalosauria
- Superfamily Ceratopsia - (horned dinosaurs)
[edit] External links
