A new species of herbivorous dinosaur with giant horns, named lokiceratops rangiformiswas discovered in an excavation in a swampy area in the state of Montana (USA), just a few kilometers from the border with Canada, the scientific magazine announced this Thursday. PeerJ.
This new dinosaur “sports the largest frilled horns ever seen in a ceratopsian (infraorder of dinosaurs),” explained Joseph Sertich, paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution and Colorado State University, and co-director of the research.
ago more than 78 million yearslokiceratops inhabited the swamps and plains along the eastern coast of Laramidia, now the western part of North America.
These four-legged dinosaurs had a mouth full of more than 200 sharp teeth to cut the vegetation, They were approximately 6.7 meters long and weighed about five tons.
The unique characteristics of lokiceratops rangiformis, according to experts, are the absence of a horn on the nose, huge curved, blade-like horns on the back of the frill – the largest ever found on a horned dinosaur – and a distinctive, asymmetrical tip in the middle of the frill.
Which is why it was given the name lokiceratops, which means “horned face of Loki”, in honor of the Norse god Loki, who wields a sword.
The second name, rangiformis, refers to the different lengths of the horns on each side of the frill, similar to the asymmetrical antlers of caribou and reindeer.
Analysis by the study team suggests that a horned dinosaur familythe centrosaurus, underwent rapid evolution and lived in relatively small geographic areas across the landmass of Laramidia Island.
The study of this new species was funded by the Museum of Evolution, the University of Utah and the National Science Foundation.
Lokiceratops was first discovered and excavated by Mark Eatman during the spring of 2019 and is now on display at the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark.
Likewise, research-quality replicas are found in the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, and the Utah Museum of Natural History, in the USA.
