Scientists have discovered a new species of horned dinosaur, a seven-metre-long rhino-like creature that gobbled plants near the southern Mexican region nearly 80 million years ago.
According to the scientists, the giant creature was so formidable because it had two four foot horns sprouting from its head which could gouge even the largest predator.
Fossil bones of an adult animal — which weighed four to five tonnes and stood six to seven feet tall at the shoulder and hip — were recovered from a site in the state of Coahuila, southern Mexico, in 2003.
The plant-eater, believed to be an ancestor of the famous three-horned Trice-ratops, was named Coahui-laceratops magnacuerna, the Telegraph reported. According to the scientists, like other horned dinosaurs, or ceratopsids, it had a large bony plate behind its head which would have acted as a shield.
But Coahuilaceratops’ most notable feature are the two enormous horns that jut out from above its eyes. They are the biggest horns ever uncovered. Scientists believe the horns were most often used in mating or jousting contests rather than to fight off predators.
Lead researcher Dr Mark Loewen, from the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, US, said: “The horned dinosaurs are an extraordinary example of vertebrate evolution. They evolved and diversified along a thin strip of land that stretched from Alaska to Mexico. Finding this horned dinosaur so far south in Mexico offers us a different picture of what the ancestors of Triceratops were like.” —PTI