Cleveland Museum of Natural History paleontologists helped discover a new dinosaur species related to the three-horned Triceratops. Brian Bull of member station WCPN in Cleveland reports.
It’s called Wendiceratops pinhornensis, and it lived about 80 million years ago.
Michael Ryan – a leading paleontologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History—says there are several physical traits that make this dino distinct:
MRyan01: “Wendiceratops is unique in that it has a very odd frill (coming) off the back of its skull, and there’s a series of short, curved, hook-like ornamentations that run the entire margin of that frill. They’re kind of curving forward as if they’re little fingers trying to grasp at you.” (:14)
Ryan says these curved hooks may have been used in combat against predators, or in shoving matches between males. The plant-eater also had a fairly prominent horn on top of its parrot-like beak which Ryan says shows an evolution between older animals with no nose and much later ones with “nasal horn cannons.”
As to the name…“Wendiceratops” is for Wendy Sloboda (SLO-boh-dah) who found the fossils, and “pinhornensis” refers to the Pinhorn Provincial Grazing Reserve where the discovery took place in Alberta, Canada.
