An elephant-sized dinosaur has been discovered that sported some of the most elaborate headgear ever seen, scientists have said.
Lokiceratops rangiformis weighed about five tonnes and measured nearly 7 metres long, making it the largest herbivore in its Late Cretaceous ecosystem. But its most remarkable feature would have been two huge blade-like bony plates that framed its face, the largest yet found on a horned dinosaur.
Scientists suspect it used these bony frills rather like modern birds of paradise use their plumage, to attract mates.
A distant cousin of the triceratops, which appeared later, it lived about 78 million years ago. Its fossilised remains were unearthed in the badlands of northern Montana, a few miles south of the US-Canada border.
The name means “Loki’s horned face that looks like a caribou”. It refers to the Norse god and Marvel character Loki, who is sometimes depicted as armed with blades — as well as to how the creature’s horns appear to have been slightly wonky, like those of modern-day caribou.
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Lokiceratops would have inhabited swamps and floodplains along the eastern shore of Laramidia, an island continent that went on to become the western part of North America.
It is a member of the ceratopsids, a group of horned herbivorous species that evolved about 92 million years ago and diversified into an array of fantastically ornamented animals. They survived until an asteroid strike ended the reign of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.
Researchers now have evidence of four similar ceratopsid dinosaur species living in the same place, apparently at the same time — a level of variety they had not expected. “There’s really way more diversity than we ever imagined,” said Professor Mark Loewen of the University of Utah, who co-led the study. “When I started as a palaeontologist, I tended to think all the cool stuff has already been found. But there really are new lessons to be learned every day.”
Joseph Sertich, a palaeontologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Colorado State University, who also led the study, said: “This is a time period where we see the appearance of our modern world. Flowering plants, birds, snakes — all these animals that we have around us today get their start at this time. And we’re just scratching the surface on understanding how that emerging world operated. Also, if you’re into dinosaurs and you love bizarre headgear on dinosaurs, this is probably the craziest, coolest dinosaur to come along in a really long time.”
The fossils were reported on Thursday in the scientific journal PeerJ.
