A dinosaur from Montana had huge blade-like horns. It's been named after Norse god Loki.
Anyone wandering 78 million years ago through the swamplands of modern day Montana may have come across a dinosaur so unusual that scientists have likened it to the god of mischief himself.
Anyone wandering 78 million years ago through the swamplands of modern day Montana may have come across a dinosaur so unusual that scientists have likened it to the god of mischief himself.
At more than 20 feet long and weighing 5 tons, this hulking herbivore had a pair of 2 footlong blade-shaped horns on its majestic, frill-shaped head. It also had two more 16-inch horns above its eyes, and perhaps more than a dozen others dotted around its face like some sort of spiky crown.
Lokiceratops rangiformis — named after the Norse god Loki, popularized recently in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — is an entirely new dinosaur previously undiscovered by paleontologists, scientists said in a journal Thursday.
Not everyone agrees. Some peers have questioned whether it’s just a variation on another type of ceratopsidae, the family of dinosaurs that includes the iconic triceratops.
Those behind the study, published in the journal PeerJ, beg to differ.
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