Meet HELLBOY a new horned dinosaur

 

A new horned dinosaur, Regaliceratops, is described based on a nearly complete skull.

Regaliceratops peterhewsi is a close relative of Triceratops with a crownlike frill.

 

The skull of the new horned dinosaur Regaliceratops peterhewsi. Courtesy of Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller, Alberta. Photo by Sue Sabrowski.

The Paleontologists have given the nickname of HELLBOY, due the similitude of the 2 small horns right there up of the eyes, but Caleb Brown of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology  has another versión of the nickname: 

Digging out the 68-million-year-old fossil took years. "It was a hellish quarry to work in,"  "The Hellboy nickname is because of all the problems with the excavation," 

‘The 1.6-metre skull was found by a member of the public only about a metre above the water along southern Alberta's Oldman River, a waterline that fluctuates widely over the seasons. It was on a steep cliff, prone to dangerous rockfalls.

The rock that housed the dinosaur was very hard. To top it off, that section of the river is crucial habitat for Alberta's provincial fish, the bull trout. No sediment or debris was allowed to fall in the water.’ _source

‘Brown says Hellboy also shows how evolution can sometimes come up with similar answers to similar situations.

Horned dinosaurs come in two families: chasmosaurs and centrosaurs.

Chasmosaurs, such as Triceratops, had small nose horns, big eye horns and scallops frills. Centrosaurs, which became extinct shortly before Hellboy appeared on the scene, had big nose horns and small eye horns.

Although Hellboy was a chasmosaur, he looked like a centrosaur. Brown said that's an example of how one species can move into an empty niche, sometimes by adopting some of the features of the previous tenant.

And Brown is convinced that there are more like Hellboy out there.’

"If there's this thing out there, there must be other things that are related to this thing as well. We still have a lot to learn."  _source

 

If you are interested in read A New Horned Dinosaur Reveals Convergent Evolution in Cranial Ornamentation in Ceratopsidae, the work of Caleb M. Brown and Donald M. Henderson you can click here.

 

#HellboyIII