Anyone wandering the swamps of modern Montana 78 million years ago may have come across a dinosaur so unusual that scientists have compared him to the god of mischief himself.
More than 20 feet long and weighing 5 tons, this burly herbivore had a pair of 2-foot-long blade-like horns on its majestic frill-like head. He also had two more 16-inch horns above his eyes, and perhaps more than a dozen others spread across his face like some sort of pointed crown.
Lokiceratops rangiformis — named after the Norse god Loki, popularized recently in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — is an entirely new dinosaur previously undiscovered by paleontologists, scientists said in a paper Thursday.
Not everyone agrees. Some colleagues have questioned whether it’s just a variation of another type of Ceratopsidae, the family of dinosaurs that includes the iconic Triceratops.
Those behind the study, published in PeerJ magazineI disagree.
“Although some paleontologists might argue that Lokiceratops is a variant of another dinosaur it lived with… the number of horns is dramatically different,” said Joseph Sertich, an affiliate professor at Colorado State University and co-author of the study. wrote on Instagram. “It’s not just the size and shape.”
Lokiceratops had at least 12 smaller horns sticking out of its head, and perhaps as many as 14, while another similar-looking dinosaur, Medusaceratops, had just 10, he said. Furthermore, he added, there is no evidence that he had a nose horn typical of many of his brothers.
This late Cretaceous beast was found in the badlands of Montana, a part of the western United States with one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur fossils on Earth.
Commercial fossil hunter Mark Eatman found the bones in spring 2019 on a Montana farm in the Kennedy Coulee region, just a few miles from the Canadian border.
Denmark’s Museum of Evolution purchased the skeleton in 2021, transporting it to the Utah-based fossil preparation and assembly company Fossilogic. There, experts used polyester resin to sculpt the missing pieces of the skull and body, while surrounding everything with silicone rubber molds so that replicas could be cast.
It was assembled in 2022 and taken to the Danish museum where it is on display. NBC News has reached out to the museum for comment.
“This is the only known specimen in the world,” the museum website says. “This incredible horned dinosaur stands out for its enormous blade-like horns… Lokiceratops was a giant!”
Many experts seem convinced.
“It genuinely appears to be a new genus and a new species,” Michael Benton, professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristol in England, told NBC News. “I find the new paper very thorough and clear, and they make a compelling case for the complex ecological relationships of the time,” he said in an email.
This dinosaur and its “close relatives all lived side by side,” Benton added, saying researchers often saw the same phenomenon in other species: “small-scale evolutionary explosions of five or six closely related species, all living and feeding in close proximity.” each other.” .”
Others are more skeptical, however.
“It’s an interesting-looking animal,” said Jordan Mallon, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature. told Science magazine. “I think it will be a little controversial whether it represents a new species or not.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
