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A brand new plant-eating dinosaur species described as “remarkable” and among the many “largest and most ornate ever found” has been found throughout an excavation in northern Montana, researchers say.
Lokiceratops rangiformis, whose discovery was first reported within the scientific journal PeerJ on Thursday, is now set to have a reconstruction of its cranium go on show on the Natural History Museum of Utah.
“The dinosaur, excavated from the badlands of northern Montana just a few miles from the USA-Canada border, is among the largest and most ornate ever found, with two huge blade-like horns on the back of its frill,” the Museum stated in a press release.
“More than 78 million years ago, Lokiceratops inhabited the swamps and floodplains along the eastern shore of Laramidia,” it added. “This island continent represents what is now the western part of North America created when a great seaway divided the continent around 100 million years ago.”
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A reconstruction of Lokiceratops within the 78-million-year-old swamps of northern Montana. (Fabrizio Lavezzi/Evolutionsmuseet, Knuthenborg/Natural History Museum of Utah)
The museum says the dinosaur possesses “several unique features,” together with “the absence of a nose horn, huge, curving blade-like horns on the back of the frill – the largest ever found on a horned dinosaur – and a distinct, asymmetric spike in the middle of the frill.
“Lokiceratops rangiformis appeared a minimum of 12 million years sooner than its well-known cousin Triceratops and was the biggest horned dinosaur of its time,” the Museum also said. “The title Lokiceratops interprets as ‘Loki’s horned face’ honoring the blade-wielding Norse god Loki. The second title, rangiformis, refers back to the differing horn lengths on all sides of the frill, just like the uneven antlers of caribou and reindeer. ”
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A rendering of the skull of Lokiceratops. The dinosaur’s reconstructed skull is set to go on display at the Natural History Museum of Utah. (Andrey Atuchin/Fabrizio Lavezzi/Evolutionsmuseet, Knuthenborg/Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark/Natural History Museum of Utah)
The fossil remains of the dinosaur were discovered in 2019 in the Kennedy Coulee region of Montana before being restored and put on display at the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark.
A reconstruction of the skull and a full-size sculpture will now be available for viewing at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City for the next six months, according to the museum.
An artist’s impression of newly identified Cretaceous Period horned dinosaur Lokiceratops, whose fossils were unearthed in the badlands of Montana. (Reuters/Sergey Krasovskiy)
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“The behemoth is a member of the horned dinosaurs referred to as ceratopsids, a gaggle that advanced round 92 million years in the past throughout the Late Cretaceous, diversified right into a myriad of fantastically ornamented species, and survived till the tip of the time of dinosaurs,” it added.
