Sinoceratops (Haolonggood)

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Review and images by bmathison1972; edited by Suspsy

Sinoceratops zhuchengensis is a centrosaurine ceratopsid that lived during the Late Cretaceous of present-day China. The holotype specimen was discovered in 2008 from the Hongtuya Formation in Shandong Province and was formally described in 2010. It was the first ceratopsid formally described from China! The holotype specimen includes a partial skull with the braincase. By the time the species was described, two more specimens were discovered from the same formation. It is believed that Sinoceratops is descended from ceratopsians that colonized Asia from North America via Beringia. A 2013 cladistic analysis showed Sinoceratops as a sister genus to the North American Xenoceratops, then another one in 2017 found it was a sister genus to the Canadian genus Wendiceratops, which was only described in 2015 and not available for the 2013 analysis. Sinoceratops probably lived in and around riparian areas, including marshes, lakes, and river deltas, occasionally it ventured into the surrounding grasslands for foraging. It shared its biome with the hadrosaur Shantungosaurus and the tyrannosaurid Zhuchengtyrannus, which probably hunted Sinoceratops. It has been produced as a toy or figure a handful of times previously, including by PNSO (both an adult and baby), Takara Tomy A.R.T.S., Vitae, Mattel, Creative Beasts Studio, Nanmu, and Favorite Co., the latter of which was paired with Zhuchengtyrannus. Today we will be looking at the version by the ever-growing Chinese company Haolonggood, which was released in late 2023.

Sinoceratops was regarded as a relatively large ceratopsian, estimated at about 6.0 meters long and weighing up to 2 tons. The raw figure length of this Haolonggood toy comes to just shy of 17.0 cm. The skull of the actual animal is estimated to have been 180 cm long. The skull of this toy is approximately 6.0 cm for a scale of 1:30, making it just slightly larger than the advertised scale of 1:35.

The figure is sculpted in what appears to be to be a somewhat defensive pose. The left front leg is reared up and the head is cocked back and slightly to the right. The tail also appears alert. Whether this animal is engaging a hungry Zhuchengtyrannus or a rival male who wants to take over his territory or harem is left to the imagination of the collector. The horns on the frill are nicely pointy! As with other Haolonggood models, the fine detail of the skin and wrinkles is remarkable! There are a few rows of osteoderms running down the spine and along either side of it; such structures are still conjectural for Sinoceratops, but they are not as prominent as seen in some ceratopsian figures.

Per usual this Sinoceratops comes in two colors, ‘blue’ (shown here) and ‘red’. While normally I don’t have a preference for color with Haolonggood’s figures, this is one example where I clearly favored one (in this case, blue) over the other. Simply calling this figure blue is a bit misleading, as it has several rich tones of brown, yellow, blue, and pink(ish), patterned with dark brown maculae (on the ‘red’ figure, the brown maculae make the figure look like a bowl of chocolate swirl ice cream to me). The frill, which was likely colorful in nature for the purposes of sexual selection and defensive posturing, is colored with purple eyespots bordered in blue and then yellow-cream.

Overall, this is a fantastic rendition of this genus for anyone who wants to add it to their prehistoric collection. In terms of quality, you can’t go wrong with either PNSO’s adult or today’s by Haolonggood, but the latter does come at a cheaper price, at least for me in the U.S.