Horned dinosaurs such as the Triceratops have a new, bulbous-nosed cousin from present-day Utah to welcome into the family. Dubbed Nasutoceratops titusi, the creature roamed the North American continent during the Late Cretaceous period.
Paleontologists unearthed Nasutoceratops at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. The area is the largest national monument in the United States the last place in the lower 48 states to be formally mapped by cartographers.
"Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is the last great, largely unexplored dinosaur boneyard in the lower 48 states," said Scott Sampson, former chief curator at the National History Museum of Utah.
The large, quadrapedal herbivore sports two long forward-oriented horns, a signature of ceratopsid dinosaurs, and a nose with a size that's puzzling to scientists.
"The jumbo-sized schnoz of Nasutoceratops likely had nothing to do with a heightened sense of smell-since olfactory receptors occur further back in the head, adjacent to the brain-and the function of this bizarre feature remains uncertain." Sampson explained. Sampson is also the lead author of the study detailing the findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
Nasuteoceratops lived in an area known as Laramidia, a piece of land formed when a shallow sea flooded the North American continent. The resulting geography separated the eastern and western coasts and created a hospitable home for ceratopsids.
"Nasutoceratops is one of a recent landslide of ceratopsid discoveries, which together have established these giant plant-eaters as the most diverse dinosaur group on Laramidia," noted co-author of the study Andrew Farke
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