NEW YORK – A new species of herbivorous dinosaur with giant horns was discovered in an excavation in a swampy area of the state of Montana just a few miles from the Canadian border. The species was named Lokiceratops rangiformis.
This new dinosaur “sports the largest frilled horns ever seen in a ceratopsian (infraorder of dinosaurs),” explained Joseph Sertich, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institute and Colorado State University, and co-leader of the research.
More than 78 million years ago, Lokiceratops 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 for cutting through vegetation, measured approximately 0.00067 hectares long, and weighed about 176,370 ounces.
According to experts, these dinosaurs have the absence of a horn on their nose, huge curved horns in the shape of blades on the back of the steering wheel. They have a distinctive, asymmetrical tip in the middle of the steering wheel.
This is why it was given the name lokiceratops, which means “horned face of Loki,” after the sword-wielding Norse god Loki.
The second name, rangiformis, refers to the different lengths of the antlers on each side of the frill, similar to the asymmetrical antlers of caribou and reindeer.
Analysis by the study team suggests that a family of horned dinosaurs, the centrosauruses, 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.
Additionally, research-quality replicas are located in the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, and the Utah Museum of Natural History, in the USA.
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