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For more than a year, visitors to the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark, are in for a treat: suggesting a previously unknown dinosaur species that did not have a name.
The placard next to the animal’s large ornate skull — reminiscent of a Triceratops — simply reads, “New dinosaur under study, stay tuned!”
Now, five years after the specimen was discovered, that dinosaur finally has a name: Lokiceratops rangiformis.
“This was found in northern Montana, about 3 miles south of the US-Canada border,” said Joseph Sertich, a paleontologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Colorado State University, and co-leader of the study revealing the findings. this, published Thursday in the journal PeerJ.
“It’s an area famous for producing horned dinosaurs. In fact, four other species of horned dinosaurs are known from this particular region,” Sertich said. “So when we started working on it, we assumed it was going to be one of those four – we were totally surprised to find out it was a whole new species.”
‘Success story’
The fossil was found in an area of North America that was separated from the rest of the continent when Lokiceratops lived, about 78 million years ago, and formed a large island called Laramidia. The dinosaurs lived among similar horned species in swamps and floodplains along the eastern shore of the island, according to the new research.
“Mark Eatman, a commercial paleontologist, discovered the fossil on private land in 2019,” Sertich said. “He goes out, he digs up fossils, to finally sell them.”
Eatman has previously found other important specimens, including one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found. He discovered that a fossil was embedded with a Triceratops, hence its nickname, “dueling dinosaurs.” First seen 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 put it on display in late April.
Lokiceratops is a “success story,” Sertich said, because a museum bought it (for an undisclosed sum) right off the ground. “Often these fossils will end up in private hands. As scientists, we don’t know where they go, they disappear. The public doesn’t see them, scientists don’t get to study them, new species don’t get new names. Basically they are lost,” he said.
“But not in this case. When it ends up at a museum, scientists can study a fossil forever and ever. And it’s also put 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 was nicknamed Loki, predicting the full taxonomic name — Lokiceratops rangiformis — which is a tribute to the Norse god Loki and a reference to the range of shapes found on the skull dinosaur, the sign that it was a species completely new to science.
“At first, it looked like a well-known dinosaur called Medusaceratops. But when we reassembled the skull, the number of horns and the shape of the horns showed that it was a different species,” Sertich said, noting that the horns show an asymmetry found today in the Caribbean antler and the reindeer.
A Triceratops cousin
Lokiceratops bears clear similarities to the famous Triceratops, but the newly named species lived about 12 million years earlier and belong to a separate lineage, Sertich said. Fossils of four other species of similar horned dinosaurs that shared their habitat have been found in the same area. Three of them have been named — Medusaceratops, Albertaceratops and Wendiceratiops — and the fourth is of uncertain classification.
“All these dinosaurs tend to be Triceratops-like in that they have horns on the face,” Sertich said. “Lokiceratops in particular has horns just like Triceratops over the eyes, but they bend to the sides instead of pointing forward.”
Another unique feature of horned dinosaurs is the frill, the large shield that extends from the back of the head over the neck. Different types of horned dinosaurs have distinct horns along the edge of that frill.
“Triceratops has very small, almost imperceptible triangular horns,” Sertich said, “but this dinosaur and many of its close relatives have huge horns on the back, as well as smaller horns on the edges of the frill. “
The fossil belongs to a dinosaur that would have been about the size of a large rhinoceros when it died, according to Sertich, and the skull ornaments would have been used to attract a mate, to intimidate a rival or more generally for identity or identities among them. own species.
Eatman found about 75% of the skull, as well as some parts of the hips, limbs and shoulder bones. However, so far only the skull is on display at the Museum of Evolution. It also contains the skeleton of Allosaurus, a large meat-eating dinosaur similar to T. rex, and attracts around 300,000 visitors a year.
A reproduction of the skull, along with a full head sculpture, skinned and based on what the dinosaur may have looked like, will be on display at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City starting Thursday.
Like a heavy metal rocker
Palaontologists who were not involved in the study expressed their enthusiasm about the discovery.
It’s an amazing discovery of a dinosaur with real personality and attitude, said Steve Brusatte, personal chair 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 a member of the same group as Triceratops but it has its own style, as do the many other horned dinosaurs that have been discovered recently,” said Brusatte. “The horns and frills of these dinosaurs were their badges of identification, their billboards to attract others and intimidate their competitors. And each new discovery seems to be stranger and stranger than the last.”
Lokiceratops is another great example of sexual experimentation in dinosaurs, according to David Norman, professor of vertebrate paleobiology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
“The bigger and the more decorative, maybe even colorful, the more attractive the owner could be seen among others,” said Norman. “Thus, like the case of the unusual birds of paradise, sexual selection can lead to the development of extremely flamboyant, even strange features.”
This study is a very cool description of another horned dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period, and it’s definitely something new, said Tyler Lyson, a paleontologist and curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. “I’m amazed at how many horned dinosaurs there were during this time, with amazing horns and ornate frills,” he said via email. “The bodies of these horned dinosaurs are very similar, but their heads are decorated with some wild head gear.”
Similar appendages are found on the heads of hornbills, Lyson said, except in these horned dinosaurs, they are attached to multiton bodies.
“It’s also fun, and hopefully exciting, that so many new dinosaurs are still being discovered here in North America, which have been closely watched and studied for over a century,” said he. “Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered.”
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