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Lokiceratops rangiformis: Fossils show the diversity of the dinosaur world
A skull almost two metres long with four impressive horns: the newly described dinosaur Lokiceratops rangiformis, discovered by researchers in the USA, makes the headdress of the most popular horned dinosaur to date – Triceratops – look almost inconspicuous. These gigantic animals lived 78 million years ago, and their fossils illustrate the immense diversity of the dinosaur world.
A discovery that revolutionises our current understanding of the dinosaur world
The name Lokiceratops rangiformis is made up of several elements: the name of the Norse god Loki, the dinosaur family Ceratopia – which means “horned face” – and an allusion to the impressive and asymmetrical antlers of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), which resemble the headdress of Lokiceratops.
A study has been published in the journal PeerJ. In it, an international research team describes the extraordinary dinosaur. The huge skull was reconstructed using fossils found in the Judith River Group in the US state of Montana.
In 2019, the 78-million-year-old bones of Lokiceratops rangiformis were discovered in a quarry in Montana. The true extent of the huge skull and horns only became clear to the researchers when palaeontologist Brock Sisson and his company Fossilogic, LLC, put the remains together. It turned out that Lokiceratops rangiformis had the longest horns of any Ceratopia dinosaur discovered to date.
This feature makes the herbivore particularly unique. In addition to the two pointed horns between the eyes, similar to Triceratops, Lokiceratops had two more imposing horns on the upper edge of the neck shield.
Lokiceratops lived in a region called Laramidia, which no longer exists today and was formed around 99 million years ago and was located where the western USA is today. In the Upper Cretaceous, Lokiceratops shared this habitat with four other representatives of Ceratopia – a discovery that revolutionised our current understanding of the dinosaur world.
“Until now, palaeontologists assumed that at most two species of horned dinosaurs could have existed in the same place at the same time,” says Mark Loewen, palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in Utah.
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