Toronto: Here comes a new horned dinosaur and its cranial ornamentation is even more flowery than the three-horned dinosaur the world had earlier known, reveals a new study.
The dinosaur possessed facial horns a giant winglike frill protruding from the back of the skull. PIC FOR
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A study of the recently discovered species, Mercuriceratops gemini, provides more details on this flashy dinosaur which possessed not only the standard trifecta of facial horns but also a giant, winglike frill protruding from the back of its skull.
The research is based on fossil evidence collected from Montana and Alberta, Canada.
“The butterfly shaped frill, or neck shield, of Mercuriceratops is unlike anything we have seen before,” said David Evans, curator of vertebrate paleontology at Royal Ontario Museum, Canada.
“Mercuriceratops shows that evolution gave rise to much greater variation in horned dinosaur headgear than we had previously suspected,” he added.
The findings appeared in t journal Naturwissenschaften.