Evrim Yazgin
Cosmos science journalist
A predecessor of Triceratops horridus with a fancy set of headwear has been discovered just south of the US-Canada border in the Badlands of Montana.
Lokiceratops rangiformis is described in a paper published in the journal PeerJ.
The ancient creature lived 78 million years ago, toward the end of the reign of dinosaurs, during the Cretaceous period (145–66 million years ago). Lokiceratops is estimated to have been nearly 7 metres long and 5 tonnes in weight – much smaller than Triceratops which could grow to 9m and 6–12 tonnes.
These animals belong to a group of herbivorous dinosaurs called the ceratopsians, of which there are dozens of known species.
Ceratopsia were beaked dinosaurs with most sporting horns on their faces and a “shield” bone at the back of the skull called a frill. Some species have horns on their frills as well, such as the impressive display on a Styracosaurus.
Lokiceratops’s frill horns are the largest ever seen on a horned dinosaur, as well as asymmetrical central frill horns. The animal also lacks the nose horn which is common among its ceratopsian cousins.
The specimen is going to be kept at Denmark’s Museum of Evolution.
“The dinosaur now has a permanent home in Denmark, so we went with a Norse god, and in the end, doesn’t it just really look like Loki with the curving blades?” says co-lead author of the new paper, Mark Loewen, a professor at the University of Utah.
“This new dinosaur pushes the envelope on bizarre ceratopsian headgear,” says co-lead author Joseph Sertich from Colorado State University. “These skull ornaments are one of the keys to unlocking horned dinosaur diversity and demonstrate that evolutionary selection for showy displays contributed to the dizzying richness of Cretaceous ecosystems.”
Lokiceratops was found in a rock layer that preserves a 78-million-year-old landscape of swamps and coastal plains.
It shared this environment with 4 other dinosaur species. Three of these 5 species were closely related and unique to the region.
“It’s unheard-of diversity to find 5 living together, similar to what you would see on the plains of East Africa today with different horned ungulates,” Sertich said.
The palaeontologists suggest that Loki’s discovery provides evidence that these species evolved rapidly in a small area – a process sometimes seen in birds.
By the end of the Cretaceous, when Triceratops was around, just 2 species of horned dinosaur remained in North America.
“Lokiceratops helps us understand that we only are scratching the surface when it comes to the diversity and relationships within the family tree of horned dinosaurs,” Loewen says.
