Re: Hell Creek Vertebrates at Berkeley catalogue

[Tom Holtz <tholtz@geochange.er.usgs.gov>]

>In my brief tour through Russ's Home Page I browsed through the Hell Creek
>Vertebrates at Berkeley catalogue. One listing was extremely puzzling. It
>was listed as Purgatorius ceratops, Class Mammalia, Order Primates.
>Hmmmm...... Is this a joke, am I a poorer biologist than my boss thinks, or
>did someone really screw up the taxonomy of this specimen? It would be a
>truely awsome thing to have a ceratopsian primate, but a little difficult to
>visualize. They could be top heavy.

It's no joke, it's real, it's (kind of) a late Maastrichtian primate.  The
"ceratops" trivial nomen probably refers to it being found in beds
characterized by ceratopsians (aka Late Cretaceous western North American
rocks).

I don't know if anyone's ever found the complete skull of Purgatorius, but
I doubt that it had horns.

(Incidentally, I hadn't known that they had named the Maastrichtian species
of Purgatorius.  Last I heard it was Purgatorius sp.)

                                
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.                                   
tholtz@geochange.er.usgs.gov
Vertebrate Paleontologist in Exile                  Phone:      703-648-5280
U.S. Geological Survey                                FAX:      703-648-5420
Branch of Paleontology & Stratigraphy
MS 970 National Center
Reston, VA  22092
U.S.A.