A new species of dinosaur has been identified among fossils that were kept in a Canadian museum for 75 years.
University of Bath researcher Nick Longrich was studying the fossilized bones from two horned dinosaurs of the ceratopsian family, and found that they are, in fact, two previously unknown species.
One of the new species is a type of Pentaceratops, the Pentaceratops aquilonius, a smaller cousin of the large, horned, plant-eating Triceratops.
These dinosaurs roamed western North America towards the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 75 million years ago.
Longrich believes that the second set of fossils is also a new species from the Kosmoceratops group. However, more complete fossils are needed in order to be certain.
According to Longrich, scientists had previously believed that most of the species of dinosaurs from western North America had been discovered.
“But it seems there are many undiscovered dinosaurs left,” Longrich said in a statement. “There are lots of species out there. We’ve really only just scratched the surface.”
Details of the new dinosaur species are published in the journal Cretaceous Research.
The fossils that Longrich has identified were previously thought to be Anchiceratops and Chasmosaurus, two other species native to western Canada.
However, Longrich found that they more closely resembled dinosaurs from New Mexico and Utah.
The Pentaceratops aquilonius is a more primitive relative to the Pentaceratops sternbergii from New Mexico, according to Longrich. It is smaller, has a different shape in the frill around its head and in the arrangement of the hornlets on its back.
According to Longrich, his research suggests that although there were distinct northern and southern provinces during the Campanian period, dinosaurs roamed between them and created new species. However, competition among the species prevented them from moving between the northern and southern regions.
The distribution of dinosaur species is different from those seen in living mammals.
“In living mammals, there tend to be relatively few large species, and they have large ranges,” Longrich said.
“With Cretaceous dinosaurs, we see a lot of large species in a single habitat. They also tend to be very regional -- as you move from one habitat to another, you get a completely different set of species.”
