WASHINGTON: About 78 million years ago in what was then a subtropical coastal plain — now the badlands of northern Montana — lived a four-legged plant-eating dinosaur built a bit like a rhinoceros with a fabulously ornate set of horns on its head.

This newly identified dinosaur, called Lokiceratops rangiformis, was about 22 feet (6.7 metres) long, weighed around 5-1/2 tons and used a powerful beak at the front of its mouth to browse on low-growing vegetation such as ferns and flowering plants, scientists said on Thursday.

Lokiceratops had two curving horns more than 16 inches (40 cm) long above its eyes, small horns on its cheeks, and blades and spikes along its extended head shield. On this frill, it had at least 20 horns including an asymmetrical pair of curved blade-shaped ones, each about two feet (61 cm) long. Those are the largest frill horns ever observed on a dinosaur.

These blade-like horns, evocative of weaponry wielded by the trickster Loki in Norse mythology, helped inspire its scientific name, which also recognises the permanent home of the fossils at the Museum of Evolution in Denmark. The name means “Loki’s horned face” and “formed like a caribou,” referring to the fact that its frill displays horns of different lengths on each side, like caribou antlers.

It was one of numerous species of horned dinosaurs, called ceratopsians, that roamed western North America during the Cretaceous Period at a time when a large inland sea split the continent in half.

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2024