A remarkable, new species of horned, plant-eating dinosaur found in Montana was unveiled June 20.
The lead researcher spoke with Yellowstone Public Radio’s Orlinda Worthington about this first-of-its-kind discovery.
“The cool thing about dinosaurs is you expect one thing and then you find something completely different.”
Mark Loewen is a professor of Geology and Geophysics and a paleontologist at the University of Utah. In 2022, he and his students were given permission to research and piece together hundreds of small, individual skull bones. The fragments were excavated in 2019, from what used to be swampland in now northern Montana.
“We totally expected this to be an already known species of dinosaur that comes from Montana called Medusa ceratops. Me and my students are saying, Oh, this shouldn't be here. And it was like a Eureka moment in which, wow, we have a new dinosaur,” Loewen said.
What they had was a horned dinosaur, the first ever exposed anywhere on the planet.
“The horned dinosaurs are interesting. They’re notable because they have horns above their eyes, often on their nose. And at the same time, they take the back of their head and they stretch it out to double the length of their skull with this giant head shield that we call a frill,” Loewen said.
Loewen says this discovery likely means there are more species of horned dinosaurs out there than paleontologists first realized.
“So new finds are happening all the time, both on public and private land in Montana that I think we'll look back in 10 years and know a whole lot more than we know right now,” Loewen said.
The university team made a sculpture reconstruction, which is being revealed June 20th, simultaneously with the unveiling of the real bones at the Museum of Evolution in Denmark, which purchased the original fossils. The dinosaur's new name will also be announced.
“Lokiceratops rangiformes.”
A full-sized sculpture of the Lokiceratops will be displayed at the Natural History Museum of Utah, in Salt Lake City, through the end of the year. In Billings, I’m Orlinda Worthington.
HOST TAG: The unveiling will be livestreamed at 10:45 Mountain Time, June 20, on the Natural History Museum of Utah’s website and Facebook page.
