The rhinosaur: Five-ton horned prehistoric reptile that looked like rhino is unearthed in Mexico
By bolodosqui on May 30, 2010 in Impacto, Otros animales
An armoured dinosaur with 4ft horns – the longest known among the extinct reptiles – has been unearthed in Mexico.
The 72 million-year-old rhino-sized plant-eater Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna was an ancestor of the famous three-horned Triceratops.
Like other horned dinosaurs, or ceratopsids, it had a large bony plate behind its head which would have acted as a shield.
Imposing: An artist’s impression of the armored dinosaur Coahuilaceratops
Coahuilaceratops’ most notable feature are the two enormous horns that jut out from above its eyes.
Fossil bones of an adult animal, which weighed four to five tons, measured around 22ft, and stood six to seven feet tall at the shoulder and hip, were recovered from a site in the state of Coahuila, southern Mexico, in 2003.
Remains of a juvenile were also found nearby.
Scientists believe the horns were most probably used in mating contests rather than to fight off predators.
Lead researcher Dr Mark Loewen, from the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, said: ‘The horned dinosaurs are an extraordinary example of vertebrate evolution.
Also discovered: An artist’s impression of a new pterosaur, named Alanqa saharica, which has been found during a dig in the Sahara desert
‘They evolved and diversified … along a thin strip of land that stretched from Alaska to Mexico. Finding this horned dinosaur so far south in Mexico offers us a different picture of what the ancestors of Triceratops were like.’
A description of the dinosaur appears in a book, New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs, published this week by Indiana University Press.
The site where the fossils were discovered, called the Cerro del Pueblo Formation, is in an arid Mexican desert.
However 72 million years ago the region was a humid estuary with lush vegetation.
Similarly, last week the Mail revealed the discovery of a new flying dinosaur, named Alanqa saharica, which roamed the Sahara before it was a desert.
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