Submission + - Paleontologists Discover World's Horniest Dinosaur
Ponca City, We love you writes: "The Guardian reports that paleontologists have uncovered the remains of an ancient beast called Kosmoceratops richardsoni that stood 16 feet tall with a 6-foot skull equipped with 15 horns and lived 76 million years ago in the warm, wet swamps of what is now southern Utah. "These animals are basically oversized rhinos with a whole lot more horns on their heads. They had huge heads relative to their body size," says Scott Sampson, a researcher at the Utah Museum of Natural History. Kosmoceratops had one horn over its nose, one over each eye, one protruding from each cheekbone and a row of ten across the frill at the back of its head. "As far as we know it's the most ornate-headed dinosaur ever found, with so many well-developed horns on its head," adds Sampson. Many palaeontologists now believe that dinosaurs' horns were often more for sexual display and fighting off other members of the same species, much like rutting deer. The animal lived in Laramidia, an area known as the "lost continent," along with other herbivores and carnivores predators like raptors and tyrannosaurs. "At the time, this was very much a swamp environment and very lush. The climate was more Mediterranean. It would have been a great place to hang out except for all the tyrannosaurs.""
