An artist's interpretation of Machairoceratops cronusi, a newly identified horned dinosaur discovered in southern Utah.
Credit: Mark Witton
Livescience has a story about a new ceratopsid dinosaur. It's named Machairoceratops cronusi and lived about 77 million years ago in prehistoric Utah. Pieces of it's skull were first discovered in 2006. At 1 to 2 tons, it measured about 20 to 26 feet long. The original paper appeared on May 18th in the journal PLOS ONE.
Each curved head spike measured about 4 feet (1.2 meters) long, and though their function isn't clear, they may have been used to attract mates, said study lead author Eric Lund, a graduate student of biological sciences at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.
The "horny" finding fills in an important gap in the fossil record of southern Laramidia, an area that included Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico during the Late Cretaceous period, Lund said. [Photos: Oldest Known Horned Dinosaur in North America]
Researchers first unearthed pieces of the dinosaur's skull in 2006, and returned to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in southern Utah, for a total of three field seasons to look for more of the remains. But they couldn't locate the rest of the body, and instead concentrated on studying what they could find: pieces of its curved head spikes, cheeks, head frill, braincase and the two almost 8-inch-long (20 centimeters) horns it had over its eyes.
Despite its impressive head spikes and horns, the dinosaur wasn't a giant compared with other dinosaurs, reaching about 20 to 26 feet (6 to 8 m) in length. At 1 to 2 tons (0.9 to 1.8 metric tons), the herbivorous beast weighed less than an African elephant. (Male African elephants can weigh up to 7.5 tons (6.8 metric tons), according to the San Diego Zoo.) It was also lighter than its relative Triceratops, which weighed between 3 and 4 tons (2.7 to 3.6 metric tons) and lived about 10 million years after it, Lund told Live Science.
