There is a new dinosaur in town, one whose head frill features horns that curl forward, making it one of the most unique horned dinosaurs ever to be found. Wendiceratops pinhornensis - as the dinosaur is named - belongs to the family that includes the likes of the famous triceratops.
However, the discovery of Wendiceratops pinhornensis - named after Wendy Sloboda who discovered the fossil and the place, Pinhorn Provincial Grazing Reserve in Alberta, Canada where the fossil was found - is considered important in that scientists claim it could shed more light on the evolutionary process of horned dinosaurs, NBC News reported.
In all, there are some 200 pieces of bones that were found. This has led scientists to conclude the dinosaur to be around 20 feet long and weighing no less than 1 ton. The dinosaur also had a horn on its nose along with one each on the top of the eye brows, stated David Evans, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.
Palaeontologists stated the bones were those of two adult and a juvenile Wendiceratops. According to The Telegraph, the bones were those from legs, feet, and body along with some portions of the skull.
However, it is the nasal horn that has sparked a lot of curiosity, with Wendiceratops pinhornensis likely to be the first in its class to have one. Palaeontologist further suggested that the development of horns has been a separate process for Wendiceratops and Triceraptors - the two different evolutionary line of dinosaurs to feature nasal horns.
Wendiceratops also shares a lot of similarity with Sinoceratops even though the latter was discovered in faraway China. Michael Ryan, a palaeontologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History sought to explain the phenomenon saying Sinoceratops to be the descendant of Wendiceratops with the former migrating to Asia from North America.
Wendiceratops lived some 79 million years ago while its Chinese counterpart, Sinoceratops dates back to 72 million years ago.