Location : Asia

Chaoyangsaurus is a very important member of the family of horned dinosaurs because it shows they lived during the Jurassic period. Before the discovery of this little dinosaur, it was believed that the horned dinosaurs, which include Triceratops  first showed up in the Cretaceous period. This early family member lived before Protoceratops  and Psittacosaurus  which are considered some of the earliest members of this family. Like the other early family members, Chaoyangsaurus is also from Asia.

First discovered in the early 1980's, rumors of this dinosaur floated around the paleontological community until it was formally described in 1999. It had previously been known by a somewhat different spelling, Chaoyoungosaurus, but its formal description changed that. This dinosaur seems to show an evolutionary link between the ceratopsian dinosaurs and the heterodontosauridae.