Large Horned Dinosaur Discovered
In New Mexico, remains from one of the largest horned dinosaurs to walk the earth was discovered. Seen as a precusor to such dinosaurs as triceratops and torosaurus, it's named ojoceratops fowleri.
Explains Archeology Daily, "The fossilized remains, discovered in 2005 in the Bureau of Land Management's Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness , included the frill, a large boney structure that curves up at the back of the head.
"Ojoceratops is a very distinctive beast," Dr. Robert M. Sullivan, vertebrate paleontologist, said in a news release from the New Mexico Museum of History and Science. "The frill is very different from Triceratops and Torosaurus, being squared off at the back unlike Triceratops, and lacking any openings in the frill, like in Torosaurus."
Field assistant Denver Fowler, who is now a Ph.D. student at Montana State University, made the actual discovery in the Ojo Alamo Formation, a rock layer older than some dinosaur-bearing formations in the West, Lucas said.
"Although bits and pieces of horned dinosaurs have been known from this rock formation for many years, the frill bone is incredibly important for finally figuring out what this animal looked like," Andy Farke, a ceratopsian expert, said. "In combination with other specimens, we have a much better idea of what New Mexico was like at the close of the age of dinosaurs."
Ojoceratops lived in both Asia and North America 65-95 million years ago in what has been deemed the Late Cretaceous Period.
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