A life reconstruction of Wendiceratops pinhornensisIMAGE - DANIELLE DUFAULTThe Triceratops family just got a little bigger. Researchers have unearthed a distant relative of the iconic dinosaur in southern Alberta near the Montana border, and the new species harbors clues to the evolution of horned dinosaurs. Dubbed Wendiceratops pinhornensis for veteran fossil hunter Wendy Sloboda, who discovered the site in 2010, the new dinosaur is described in a PLOS ONE study published yesterday (July 8).
“Whether you’re looking at a triceratops or at our Wendi, all the important evolutionary details for these horned dinosaurs are in the skulls,” study coauthor Michael Ryan of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History told the Washington Post. “If you just cut their heads off and looked at their bodies from the neck down, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart.”
Of particular interest to paleontologists is the lengthy nose horn of W. pinhornensis, which roamed the Earth some 79 million years ago. The horn perched atop the species’ foreskull was longer than any other species of a similar age. Later on, species with elaborate nose horns turn up in the fossil record, but these arose from dinosaurs with little or nothing in the ...
