Newly discovered dinosaur horns look ‘like something a heavy metal rocker would wear’

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For more than a year, visitors to the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark, have been enjoying a treat: admiring a previously unknown species of dinosaur that did not have a name.

The label next to the animal’s large, wonderfully ornate skull, reminiscent of a triceratops, simply reads: “New dinosaur under study, stay tuned!” »

Today, five years after the discovery of the specimen, this dinosaur finally has a name: Lokiceratops rangiformis.

“This was found in northern Montana, about 3 miles south of the Canada-U.S. border,” said Joseph Sertich, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Colorado State University, and co- responsible for the study which reveals these results. published Thursday in the journal PeerJ.

“This is an area known for producing horned dinosaurs. In fact, there are four other species of horned dinosaurs known from this particular region,” Sertich said. “So when we started working on it, we assumed it would be one of these four species. We were completely shocked to find out it was a completely new species.”

The fossil was discovered in a region of North America that was distinct from the rest of the continent when Lokiceratops was alive, around 78 million years ago, and formed a large island called Laramidia. The dinosaur lived among similar horned species in swamps and floodplains along the island’s east coast, according to the new research.

“The fossil was discovered on private land in 2019 by Mark Eatman, who is a commercial paleontologist,” Sertich said. “He goes out, he digs up fossils, to eventually sell them.”

Eatman has unearthed other important specimens in the past, including one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever discovered. He found this fossil entangled in a Triceratops, hence its nickname “duel dinosaurs”. First spotted in 2006, it was purchased by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh after several attempts to sell it to private buyers and legal battles over its status. The museum exhibited it at the end of April.

Lokiceratops is a “success story,” Sertich said, because a museum bought it (for an undisclosed amount) straight from the ground. “Often these fossils disappear into private hands. As scientists we don’t know where they go, they just disappear. The public can’t see them, scientists can’t study them, new species don’t get new names. They’re basically lost,” he said.

“But not in this case. When it ends up in a museum, a fossil can be studied forever by scientists. And it’s also on display, so the public can see it and enjoy it.

Lokiceratops has been on display at the Museum of Evolution since March 2023. The specimen has been nicknamed Loki, predicting the full taxonomic name — Lokiceratops rangiformis — which is both a tribute to the Norse god Loki and a reference to the range of forms found on the dinosaur skull, a telltale sign that this was an entirely new species to science.

“At first it looked like a known dinosaur called Medusaceratops. But as we reassembled the skull, the number of horns and the shape of the horns indicated that it was a different species,” Sertich said, noting that the horns exhibit an asymmetry that l Today we find caribou and reindeer in the woods.

Lokiceratops has obvious similarities to the famous Triceratops, but the newly named species lived about 12 million years earlier and belongs to a distinct lineage, Sertich said. Fossils of four other species of similar horned dinosaurs with which it shared its habitat have been discovered in the same area. Three of these have been named – Medusaceratops, Albertaceratops and Wendiceratiops – and a fourth is of uncertain classification.

“All of these dinosaurs generally resemble Triceratops in the sense that they have horns on their faces,” Sertich said. “The Lokiceratops in particular has horns, just like the Triceratops, above the eyes, but they curve to the sides instead of pointing forward.”

The other unique feature of horned dinosaurs is the frill, the large shield that extends from the back of the head to the neck. Different types of horned dinosaurs have distinct horns along the edge of this frill.

“Triceratops has very small, almost imperceptible triangular horns,” Sertich said, “but this dinosaur and many of its close relatives have huge paddle-shaped horns on the back, as well as smaller horns on the backs. edges of the steering wheel.”

The fossil belongs to a dinosaur that would have been about the size of a large rhino when it died, according to Sertich, and the skull ornaments would have been used to attract a mate, intimidate a rival or more generally for identification or recognition among its own species.

Eatman discovered about 75 percent of the skull, as well as parts of the hips, limbs and shoulder bones. However, until now only the skull was on display at the Museum of Evolution. It also houses a skeleton of Allosaurus, a large carnivorous dinosaur similar to T. rex, and attracts around 300,000 visitors a year.

A reproduction of the skull, along with a complete sculpture of the head, stuffed with skin and based on what researchers think the dinosaur might have looked like, will be on display at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City from Thursday.

Paleontologists who were not involved in the study expressed excitement over the discovery.

It’s a remarkable discovery of a dinosaur with real personality and attitude, said Steve Brusatte, personal professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom.

“His headgear looks like something a heavy metal rocker would wear on stage. It is in the same group as Triceratops but has its own style, just like the dozens of other horned dinosaurs discovered recently,” Brusatte said. “The horns and frills of these dinosaurs were their badges of identity, their billboards to attract mates and intimidate rivals. And each new discovery seems stranger and stranger than the last.

Lokiceratops is another remarkable expression of sexual experimentation among dinosaurs, according to David Norman, professor of vertebrate paleobiology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

“The larger and more decorative the ornamentation, perhaps even colorful, the more potentially attractive the owner can appear to potential partners,” Norman said. “So, much like in the case of the extraordinary birds of paradise, sexual selection can lead to the development of extremely flamboyant, even bizarre, characteristics.”

This study is a very interesting description of another horned dinosaur from the late Cretaceous, and there is no doubt that it belongs to something new, said Tyler Lyson, a paleontologist and curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. “I am amazed at how many horned dinosaurs, all with wonderfully ornate horns and frills, there were during this time interval,” he said by email. “The bodies of these horned dinosaurs are very similar, but their heads are adorned with wild headgear.”

Similar appendages are found on the heads of horned lizards, Lyson added, except that in these horned dinosaurs they are attached to bodies weighing several tons.

“It’s also amusing, and hopefully inspiring, that so many new dinosaurs are still being discovered here in North America, which has been intensely prospected and studied over the last hundred years,” he said . “Who knows what else there is to discover.”