Bizarre dinosaur with 15 horns discovered
Palaeontologists have unearthed a bizarre dinosaur with 15 horns that roamed in southern Utah region in the US some 76 million-years-ago.
The dinosaur, believed to be one of the close relatives of Triceratops, had a horn over its nose, one atop each eye, one at the tip of each cheekbone, and 10 across the rear margin of its bony frill.
According scientists, the head of the amazing animal, named Kosmoceratops richardsoni, is the most ornate of any dinosaur known.
The name comes from the Latin “kosmos” for ornate, the Greek “ceratops” meaning horned face, and the latter part honours Scott Richardson, the volunteer who discovered two skulls of this animal in 2007, LiveScience reported.
“Kosmoceratops is one of the most amazing animals known, with a huge skull decorated with an assortment of bony bells and whistles,” said researcher Scott Sampson, a research curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History.
It is believed that the animal was about five meters long and weighed about 2,500 kg when alive. Its larger relative, also newly discovered, is named Utahceratops gettyi — honouring Mike Getty, palaeontology collections manager at the Utah Museum of Natural History, who discovered this behemoth in 2000.
It possessed a large horn over the nose, and short, blunt eye horns that projected strongly to the side rather than upward, much more like the horns of modern bison than those of Triceratops and its other relatives, known as ceratopsians.
Post new comment