Thaindian News

September 23, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Scientists uttered on Wednesday that they have unearthed fossils in the barren region of southern Utah. These fossils were of two new dinosaur species strongly associated with the triceratops. One of the species possesses 15 horns on its hefty head.

The detection of the new-fangled herbivorous species was mentioned on Wednesday in the online scientific magazine, PLoS ONE. The detected species consist of Kosmoceratops richardsoni, which is regarded as the most ornate-headed dinosaur known to humankind. K. richardsoni possessed 15 horns. One of the horns was placed over the nose and one over each eye. There was a horn at the tip of each cheekbone. There were 10 horns across the back of its gaunt frill.

The other dinosaur possesses five horns and is the bigger of the two. It has been designated as the Utahceratops gettyi. It had a huge horn over the nose and petite horns that projected to the side. These features resembled that of a bison.

These dinosaurs resided on an island continent that has been labeled as Laramidia. This was when what is now North America was partitioned by an inner sea that ran along the eastern side of the Rockies. This internal sea broadened from the Gulf of Mexico via Alaska. The climate was boggy, marshy and subtropical.

The fossils were unearthed in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which happens to be a 1.9 million acre span of arid region in southern Utah. The dinosaurs wandered in the region some 74 to 77 million years ago.

The canvassers have uttered that the findings provide credibility to the proposition that the centers of high dinosaur endemism survived within continents during the period.

Mark Loewen happens to be a paleontologist associated with the Utah Museum of Natural History. He has also been a creator of the aforementioned study. He has declared that it is rare that two rhino-sized dinosaurs that are dissimilar from all the other dinosaurs are discovered in North America.