Researchers after studying the recently found fossils of one of the oldest-known members of the dinosaur group like Triceratops said that the forerunners of this giant beast were far more modest.

A team of scientists on Wednesday announced that they have found remains of a spaniel-sized dinosaur in the Gobi Desert in western China’s Xinjiang Province. Scientists named the dinosaur as Hualianceratops that lived about 160 million years ago late in the Jurassic Period.

According to researchers, the dinosaur was almost three feet long and was much smaller than the later members of the same group. Triceratops, which lived alongside Tyrannosaurus rex in western North America about 67 million years ago, was more than 30 feet (9 meters) in length.

Hualianceratops, which means ‘ornamental face’, didn’t have any horns and walked on two legs. It had a giant triangular head, with a very small neck frill. Like all other ceratopsians, it had a beak for eating the herbs and vegetation.

George Washington University paleontologist Catherine Forster said, “It would look very odd, with its relatively big head and running about on its hind legs. It's not usual today to see animals walking on their hind legs. Humans are very unusual in that respect. But it was very common in the dinosaur world”.

Ceratopsians also did not walk with four legs. It did not become quadrupedal and did not acquire their trademark horns until tens of millions of years later.

Hualianceratops lived in the same time and same place as the Yinlong, which until now had been considered the earliest-known ceratopsian, said Forster.