An artist’s reconstruction of Lokiceratops rangiformis, a new species of ceratopsian recovered from the badlands of northern Montana.Credit...Sergey Krasovskiy for the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark
The New York Times has an article about the discovery of a fossil skull that might represent a new species of ceratopsian dinosaur. Lokiceratops rangiformis, lived about 78 million years ago in what is now the badlands of northern Montana. L. rangiformis weighed 5 tons and had large curving brow horns and huge bladed spikes on the edge of its frill. The animal was described in paper in the journal PeerJ.
The researchers argue that this is a new species, and with others like it suggest that the area from Mexico to Alaska was full of pockets of local dinosaur biodiversity. Other experts, though, contend that there is not enough evidence to draw such conclusions based on one set of remains.
The skull of the dinosaur in question was discovered in 2019 by a commercial paleontologist on private land in northern Montana. It was acquired by the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark.
“They saved it by purchasing it, so now it’s available in perpetuity for scientists to look at it,” said Joseph Sertich, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and an author of the study. “We couldn’t write a paper on a fossil sitting in a rich person’s living room and being treated as art.”
