a plant-eating pachycephalosaurid marginocephalian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia.
Pronunciation: PREE-no-SEF-a-lee
Meaning: Sloped head
Author/s: Maryanska and Osmólska (
1974)
Synonyms: Homalocephale?,
Sphaerotholus?
First Discovery: Omnogovi, Mongolia
Discovery Chart Position: #241
Prenocephale prenes
(Sloping Sloping head)Etymology
The name
Prenocephale is derived from the Greek "prenes" (sloping, slanted or inclined) and "cephale" (head) which is the go-to suffix for members of Pachycephalosauridae.
The
species epithet,
prenes,
means, errr, sloping, slanted or inclined, in Greek.
Discovery
Prenocephale was discovered at "Northern Nemegt, site 19" (aka PMPE Nem019, "the zone of
Saurolophus angustirostris and
Tarbosaurus bataar") in the Nemegt Formation of Mongolia's Gobi Desert, by Halszka Osmólska of the joint Polish and Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions (PMPE) in 1970.
The
holotype (Z. Pal. MgD-I/104) is a well preserved skull with some teeth but no lower jaws, and several fragmentary back vertebrae and ribs, one tail vertebra, a badly damaged left thigh, a partial right thigh, and numerous tendons from the tail, some of which were in natural arrangement.
• Maryanska T and Osmólska H (1974) "
Pachycephalosauria, a new suborder of ornithischian dinosaurs".
Palaeontologia Polonica 30: 45-102.
• Sullivan RM (2000a) "
Prenocephale edmontonensis (Brown and
Schlaikjer) New Comb. and P. brevis (Lambe) New Comb. (Dinosauria: Ornithischia: Pachycephalosauria) from the Upper Cretaceous of North America".
Page 177–190 in Lucas and Heckert (eds.) "Dinosaurs of New Mexico". New Mexico Museum of
Natural History Bulletin 17.
• Longrich NR, Sankey J and Tanke D (2010) "
Texacephale langstoni, a new genus of pachycephalosaurid (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) from the upper Campanian Aguja Formation, southern Texas, USA".
Cretaceous Research, doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2009.12.002.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
PRENOCEPHALE :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/PRENOCEPHALE›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
