Protoceratops
As a Protoceratops you would be the sheep of the Late Cretaceous Gobi: stocky, common, beaked – and the favourite target of a certain feathered predator.
The commonest face in the dunes
Protoceratops andrewsi lived around 75–71 million years ago in what is now Mongolia and northern China, in the Djadokhta Formation – an arid landscape of dunes and seasonal streams. It was found in 1922 by the American Museum of Natural History’s Central Asiatic Expeditions and named in 1923.
It is one of the best-sampled dinosaurs anywhere, with hundreds of specimens from hatchlings to adults. Adults were about 1.5–2 metres long and weighed perhaps 60–100 kilograms. They had a beak, a modest frill and no real horns, only a bump on the nose. Adult skulls vary in frill size and nose shape, which some researchers interpret as differences between sexes, though others see only ordinary individual variation.
The Fighting Dinosaurs
In 1971 a Polish–Mongolian expedition found one of the most famous fossils ever: a Protoceratops and a Velociraptor locked together, the raptor’s sickle claw in the Protoceratops’ neck region and its arm clamped in the Protoceratops’ jaws. Both were probably buried alive by a collapsing dune or sandstorm.
So your life would involve real danger, but also the ability to bite back – hard. Bite marks and broken bones on other specimens show that Velociraptor also scavenged Protoceratops carcasses.
Griffins and nests
Folklorist Adrienne Mayor has suggested that Protoceratops skulls, weathering out along ancient caravan routes, may have inspired the legend of the griffin. It is an attractive idea, though historians debate it.
A 2011 discovery of a nest with 15 juveniles hints at some parental care, and in 2020 a study of Protoceratops embryos showed their eggs had soft, leathery shells – changing ideas about how early dinosaur eggs looked.
