A newly named horned dinosaur may shed more light on Ceratopsidae, an iconic family of large-bodied dinosaurs that include the Triceratops.
The one-ton Wendiceratops pinhornensis is among the oldest horned dinosaurs. It walked the Earth about 79 million years ago, or about 13 million years earlier than its famous cousin the Triceratops. It was named after Wendy Sloboda, the fossil hunter who discovered the remains at a site in southern Alberta, Canada.
Cleveland Museum of Natural History curator Michael Ryan, who co-authored a study on the find, which was published in the journal PLOS One, said that they were able to describe the new dinosaur because they have collected parts of the skull, body, legs and feet.
More than 200 bones were unearthed from southern Alberta's Oldman Formation in 2011, which paleontologists said belonged to three adults and one juvenile.
"Beyond its odd, hook-like frill, Wendiceratops has a unique horn ornamentation above its nose that shows the intermediate evolutionary development between low, rounded forms of the earliest horned dinosaurs and the large, tall horns of Styracosaurus, and its relatives," Ryan said adding that the locked horns of two of this prehistoric animals could have likely been used in combat to win a female or gain access to territory.
The Wendiceratops is an herbivore that ate low-lying plants using its parrot-like beak lined with dozens of leaf-shaped teeth. The most distinctive feature of this prehistoric animal is its forward-curling horns.
Royal Ontario Museum's David Evans, who also co-authored the study, said that the Wendiceratops could be the first of the Ceratopsidae to have horns. He likewise said that the creature helps scientists understand how skull ornamentation of this family of horn-faced dinosaurs has evolved.
"We describe a new taxon of a highly adorned basal centrosaurine, Wendiceratops pinhornensis gen. et sp. nov., from the lower part of the Oldman Formation (middle Campanian, approximately 78-79 Ma), Alberta, Canada," the researchers wrote in their study published on July 8. "Over 200 bones derived from virtually all parts of the skeleton, including multiple well-preserved specimens of the diagnostic parietosquamosal frill, were collected from a medium-density monodominant bonebed, making the new taxon one of the best-represented early ceratopsids."
The researchers said that the Wendiceratops appeared to be a close relative of an Asian horned dinosaur called Sinoceratops with the two having similar size and shape.
Ryan said that the Wendiceratops or closely related animals may have given rise to creatures that the Sinoceratops evolved from, which migrated to Asia from North America.
Photo: Brian Boyle, ROM
