Xenoceratops (Age of the Dinosaurs by PNSO)

4.1 (16 votes)

Xenoceratops, the “alien horned face,” is one of the oldest known ceratopsids and currently the only one to have been discovered in the Foremost Formation of Alberta, Canada. Its name derives from from that distinctness that its as opposed to the striking arrangement of horns on its skull.

PNSO’s 2018 Xenoceratops miniature goes by the highly appropriate name of Ripley. She is posed with her powerful head raised high and looking to the left, her limbs firmly planted, and her tail swinging to the right. Her eyes are wide and alert, as though she has caught sight of an approaching theropod. Not very many dinosaurs are currently known from the Foremost Formation, but they include the pachycephalosaurs Colepiocephale and Stegoceras and the coelurosaurs Dromaeosaurus, Saurornitholestes, and Thanatotheristes.

I love the CollectA version’s colours. They don’t make enough dinosaur toys in black.

Ripley measures just about 8.5 cm long. Her base colour is beige with dark grey covering most of her body. Pale yellow wash is used to highlight her many round scales. Her head features a light brown beak, black markings around her yellow eyes and on her frill, and blackened tips on her horns. Hardly what you’d call exciting, but plausible.

The sculpting on Ripley is on par with the last two PNSO ceratopsians I reviewed here, which is to say very impressive for such a small toy. As I mentioned previously, Ripley’s body is covered in tiny round scales as well as thick wrinkles on her flanks and neck. Her limbs are stout and muscular, and end in the correct number and arrangement of digits. Her beak and horns have faint grooves and her frill features rows of large osteoderms. I could do without the sunken, shrink-wrapped nostrils, however.

But the most important thing to get correct on any ceratopsian is, of course, the skull, and whoever sculpted Ripley has done an excellent job. The top of her frill features the distinctive pair of small round epiparietals flanked by larger, triangular ones. Her postorbital horns are relatively short and angled slightly out to the sides and instead of a nasal horn, she has more of a low ridge. These last features are speculative at the present time, but they are in keeping with other restorations of Xenoceratops.

Ripley is yet another impressive miniature ceratopsian from PSNO, more so given that Xenoceratops has only ever received two other toys to date (CollectA and Creative Beast Studio’s Beasts of the Mesozoic). Recommended.

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Comments 3

  • I like the Little Dinosaurs line, even though they’re occasionally oddly proportioned. Here’s hoping they continue to produce them.

  • That xenoceratops is almost perfect. I say almost perfect because the size has a defect. If it were as large as the PNSO xenoceratops it would be outstanding and majestic.

    Seriously, that xenoceratops is a totally perfect miniature and PNSO proves that it can make small-sized dinosaurs that do not have to envy the sculptures, medium or large of most of the dinosaur toys that exist on the market.

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