Protoceratops (Prow-tow-seh-rah-tops), literally “first horned face” has made its way into many a dinosaur encyclopedia under the guise of just that: a primitive ancestor to the larger, more advanced ceratopsians. However, as it lived around the same time of many of its so-called descendants, this explanation has lost its credence. There’s no shortage of Protoceratops fossils in their home range of China and Mongolia, from eggs to juveniles to adults. We even see some spectacular interspecific interactions, from death duels with Velociraptor to insect boreholes in the flesh and bones. Spectacular for us, that is - I doubt the dinosaurs enjoyed it much. P. andrewsi, the species in front of you, is known specifically from the Djadochta (Juh-duck-ta) Formation in Mongolia, which had a hot semi-arid climate during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. This is similar to the modern climate of the Gobi Desert. Some animals that shared this environment include Citipati, Velociraptor, and Udanoceratops. Some paleontologists suggest Protoceratops may have evaded the desert heat by digging small burrows. If this is true, it wouldn’t be the only example of a digging dinosaur! The thescelosaur Oryctodromeus was preserved inside a burrow it presumably dug, and fossils of Protoceratops appearing rapidly buried in sand may have suffered the same fate.