Two new horned dinosaurs discovered in western America

Two new species of large horned dinosaurs – close cousins of the famous herbivorous Triceratops – have been unearthed in the western desert of the US, paleontologists have revealed.

The “remarkable” finds – one of the dinosaurs had a massive 2.3-metre skull, the other with a head decorated with 15 horns – were made in southern Utah.

Researchers said the ancient beasts were thought to have lived some 76 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period.

“The giant plant-eaters were inhabitants of the ‘lost continent’ of Laramidia, formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America,” according to paleontologists, who revealed their work in an online open-access journal produced by the Public Library of Science.

The larger of the finds, with its enormous skull, was named Utahceratops gettyi, after the US state, and Mike Getty, paleontology collections manager at the Utah Museum of Natural History, who discovered the animal. Ceratops is Ancient Greek for “horned face.”

In size and look, Mark Loewen, a co-author on the paper, described Utahceratops as “a giant rhino with a ridiculously supersized head”.

The smaller of the dinosaurs is named the Kosmoceratops richardsoni, with kosmos being Latin for “ornate,” after its elaborate collection of horns dotted around its skull. The last part of the name is an ode to volunteer researcher Scott Richardson who discovered two skulls of the animal.

Kosmoceratops’ 15 horns are located over the nose, one atop each eye, one at the tip of each cheek bone, and the remaining ten across the rear part of bony frill, “making it the most ornate-headed dinosaur known,” according to the study.

Lead author Scott Sampson described Kosmoceratops as “one of the most amazing animals known, with a huge skull decorated with an assortment of bony bells and whistles.” The study was funded mostly by the US Bureau of Land Management and the National Science Foundation.