by James R Coffey

Created on: September 23, 2010

TWO NEW DINOSAUR SPECIES FOUND IN UTAH: September 22, 2010.

According to information published today in the open-access science journal PloS.One, archaeologists excavating in Utah have unearthed two new dinosaur species said to be among the most bizarre ever discovered in the world.

One species named Kosmoceratopsm, meaning "ornate horned-face," in Latin, was at least 15 feet in length, had 15 horns decorating its massive head (compared to the well-known three-horned triceratops), giving it the most elaborate dinosaur headdress known to science.  The second discovery, dubbed Utahceratops, Latin for "Utah horned-face," was adorned with unusually short horns that stuck out to the side like a bison's, was roughly 20 feet long, and weighed 3 to 4 tons.

At a press conference held today (September 22, 2010), study leader Scott Sampson of the Utah Museum of Natural History told reporters, "The hooks at the back of the skull would've been relatively useless as weapons, but they're great for showing off.  These are effectively the peacock feathers ... of the dinosaur world.  The skulls alone can be in excess of 6 feet long, among the largest heads on any land animal that ever lived.” The new discoveries are "first-class finds, no doubt about it," said the University of Pennsylvania's Peter Dodson, a leading authority on horned dinosaurs.  Kosmoceratops in particular "is absurd, a really, really bizarre-looking animal.  Kosmoceratops is an outlier even in its class." Lukas Panzarinof Utah Museum of Natural History, told AOL.News that the dinosaurs most likely used those formidable horns to beckon lady dinosaurs, perhaps to fend off rival suitors, but certainly not to impale prey.  Both species were plant eaters, somehow swelling to a massive size on the lush vegetation that once thrived in the warm, swampy landscape that Utah had during the Late Cretaceous period, more than 70 million years ago.  The bone yards that yielded the amazing fossils lie in what is now the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, an isolated, rocky desert granted strict federal protection in 1996.  In addition to uncovering these two extraordinary new species, the researchers helped solidify the long held theory that a no-go zone in northern Utah divided dinosaurs into northern and southern populations.  Dinosaurs from Canada are completely different from those in Utah. Something, perhaps a change in climate, kept the two groups from mixing.

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