Triceratops has always been my favourite dinosaur, it's just so freaking awesome looking. So I was very excited to come across a new paper in PLOS ONE by the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History giving the details of a new member of the ceratopsids. The venerable old lady pictured below has been named Wendiceratops after Wendy Sloboda, the veteran fossil hunter who discovered this particular fossil bed in Alberta in 2010.
Just like triceratops wendiceratops would have been a herbivore cropping away at medium length grass, much like rhinos today. The horns would have been used for defence from predators and for competition when mating, the frill could have been used for display and perhaps also to keep the animal cool like an elephant's ears. The interesting thing about this find is that it actually pre-dates triceratops by several million years and represents a second independent evolution of a conical nose horn in this family.
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