Posted on 06/24/2024 6:02:25 AM PDT by Red Badger
Lokiceratops rangiformis made its home in parts of what's now northern Montana and is thought to have the largest frill horns ever seen among its kind to date.
A reconstruction of Lokiceratops surprised by a crocodilian in the 78-million-year-old swamps of northern Montana, USA. Illustration: Andrey Atuchin/Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark.
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Scientists have discovered a new, very cool-looking dinosaur. The intricately horned beast is a relative of the famous Triceratops and has been named Lokiceratops rangiformis. It’s thought to have roamed around the western half of North America over 78 million years ago, back when the continent was split into several large island masses.
The discovery and naming of L. rangiformis was made by a large group of researchers from the U.S., Canada, UK, Denmark, and Panama. The fossils used to determine its identity were excavated from the badlands of northern Montana, not too far from Canada. Back then, the area was thought to have primarily been swamps and floodplains. And L. rangiformis is thought to have made its home along the eastern shores of Laramidia—an island continent during the Late Cretaceous period that existed as a result of the Western Interior Seaway splitting what we now call North America into two.
The dinosaur’s first name refers to the Norse God Loki, known for his horned attire, while the second is a nod to caribou, present-day animals that tend to have asymmetric antlers. Put the two together and L. rangiformis literally means: “Loki’s horned face that looks like a caribou.”
L. rangiformis is part of a diverse group of dinosaurs known as ceratopsids, which are thought to have first emerged around 92 million years ago. Ceratopsids were successful as a whole, with members living all the way up until the end of the dinosaur age 66 million years ago (when, you know...). But scientists believe that L. rangiformis belonged to a much more narrow niche of these dinosaurs.
Reconstructions of all four centrosaurine dinosaurs that lived together in the Kennedy Coulee Assemblage of northern Montana and southern Alberta.Illustration: Fabrizio Lavezzi/Evolutionsmuseet, Knuthenborg The team’s discovery was detailed in a paper published Thursday in the journal PeerJ, while the Natural History Museum of Utah and other affiliated institutions are unveiling the dinosaur to the public this week. The team has also made available beautiful reconstructions of these dinosaurs and three other ceratopsian species that lived alongside it.
“This new dinosaur pushes the envelope on bizarre ceratopsian headgear, sporting the largest frill horns ever seen in a ceratopsian,” said co-lead author Joseph Sertich, a paleontologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Colorado State University, in a statement released by the University of Utah, which manages the museum.
L. rangiformis is the fourth such ceratopsid and fifth horned dinosaur overall to be identified in the area, which has led paleontologists to reassess the evolutionary branch of these animals. The isolated nature of living in Laramidia may have driven L. rangiformis and other ceratopsids to evolve in drastic ways. Fearsome as the horns might appear to us today, the researchers believe that they were more like ornaments, used to entice females into mating.
“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,” said Sertich.
PinGGG!...........................
it is pride month after all.
Thanks Red Badger.
In case anyone is curious, those are quills on the tails of the psittacosaurus and leptoceratops. They’re ancestral to feathers. Sorry, but the “feathered dinosaur” notion is largely inaccurate; the only dinosaurs that had feathers are those that are ancestral to birds. These are somewhat distantly related to those; you can see that archoceratops looks vaguely like a T-rex. Birds are related to the T-rex, but T-rex’s lineage probably lost quills shortly after diverging from birds’ lineage and probably never had feathers. I’m distinguishing between quills and feathers by defining a quill as a long, hollow tube of keratin protruding from the skin, and a feather as a highly branched quill, suitable for warmth if not necessarily flight.
The core issue of our time.
They are all dead.....................A CLUE!................
You are the reason for this madness.
I guess diversity was not their strength. Perhaps there is a lesson here for us.
I believe they were vegetarians as well..............
I remember reading an article in a magazine, way before the Internet, that said there could not have been enough plants and animals on the Earth, even taking into account a billion years, to account for the amount of petroleum being pumped out of the ground.
While coal is definitely a ‘fossil fuel’, you can actually see imprints of plants in it, petroleum is not.
Science has never fully explained just where liquid petroleum comes from, and how it got ‘down there’ in the first place.................
Well, that’s an easy one! God put it there in the first place, then gave us the brains and talent to figure out how to use it to our benefit. ;)
Still working on why He felt SNAKES were necessary. And, Mosquitoes! ;)
I appreciate you humor!
Just a thought, though...
...it could be that the "prince of this world"...
...did a little perversion of creation.
(just somethin tho think about...)
Is it just me or does the artist’s rendering of Medusaceratops look like bacon?
You skipped breakfast?.................
On a related note: for years whenever I drove through Hartford on my way to NYC I saw a sign a bit south of the city that says "Dinosaur State Park Next Exit". I was always curious but never stopped until a few months ago.
They have there footprints...in mud...that dinosaurs made about 200 million years ago.The guide told me they carbon dated the mud and the footprints and calculated 200 million years. The guide also told me that the creatures that walked there probably looked a bit like the creature in Jurassic Park that spit that black stuff in the face of the fat guy who was stealing the dino DNA.
Amazing stuff IMO.
I remember a geologist calling into Rush’s show one time. He explained that crude oil was the byproduct of thermonuclear activity taking place in the Earth’s (core or mantel? I forget.) and that its creation was continuous. His explanation made a heck of a lot more sense than dinosaur grease.
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