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<\/div>Artist\u2019s impression of Lokiceratops encountering a crocodilian in the 78-million-year-old swamps of northern Montana<\/p>\n
\u00a9Andrey Atuchin for the Museum of Evolution in Maribo, Denmark.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
A newly discovered relative of Triceratops<\/em> had a unique array of head ornaments, including the largest frill horns ever seen on a horned dinosaur.<\/p>\n The fossil remains of the dinosaur were found in 2019 on private property near the US\/Canada border in Montana. They were purchased by the Museum of Evolution in Denmark, where they are currently on display.<\/p>\n It is thought that the creature lived around 78 million years ago and would have been about 6.7 metres long, weighing around 5 tonnes.<\/p>\n Lokiceratops rangiformis, <\/em>as it has been named, had two long horns at the front of its head as well as three main horns on the frill at the back of its head. The largest frill horns, positioned on each side of the skull, were flat, broad and curving in a scimitar-like shape.<\/p>\n They were probably used for display rather than defence, says Joseph Sertich<\/a> at Colorado State University, and measured more than 60 centimetres long on their outer curve. \u201cBy absolute volume and length, Lokiceratops<\/em> had the largest frill horns ever seen,\u201d says Sertich.<\/p>\n When it lived, about 12 million years before its most famous relative Triceratops<\/em>, its home in what is now the western part of North America was an island continent named Laramidia.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Several other dinosaurs from the Ceratopsid family have been found in the same fossil assemblage. \u201cThis is the first interval where five horned dinosaurs have been found living at the same place and time,\u201d says Sertich.<\/p>\n Mark Loewen<\/a> at the University of Utah coined the name of the fossil after the Norse god Loki because its permanent home is now Denmark. The species name, rangiformis<\/em>, refers to the resemblance between the dinosaur\u2019s asymmetric middle-frill horns and the asymmetric front tines, or branches, of reindeer antlers.<\/p>\n \u201cMany modern deer have asymmetrical antlers,\u201d says Loewen. \u201cWe also know that asymmetry is not uncommon in horned dinosaurs, but it is striking in Lokiceratops<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n