Welcome to Jurassic Park - Two new horned dinosaurs were discovered in Utah - Polidicks

[img]http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/263/cache/new-horned-dinosaurs-utah_26352_600x450.jpg[/img] [release] [B]Two newly discovered horned dinosaur species from an ancient "lost continent" are some of the most surprising and ornate yet found, paleontologists say.[/B] The new dinosaurs are members of the ceratopsids, the group of dinosaurs that includes Triceratops. The animals were generally four-legged herbivores with horns and bony frills rising from the backs of their heads. The larger of the two dinosaurs, Utahceratops gettyi, had a 7-foot-long (2.3-meter-long) skull, prompting study co-author Mark Loewen of the University of Utah to compare the animal to "a giant rhino with a ridiculously supersized head." (Also see "Huge New Dinosaur Found via 'Mind-boggling' Skulls.") The other new dinosaur, Kosmoceratops richardsoni, is "one of the most amazing animals known, with a huge skull decorated with an assortment of bony bells and whistles," study leader Scott Sampson, also of the University of Utah, said in a statement. Kosmoceratops' head is covered in horns: one on the nose, one over each eye, one at the tip of each cheek, and several running along the dinosaur's head frill. (See pictures of other "extreme" dinosaurs.) "Most of these bizarre features would have made lousy weapons to fend off predators," Sampson said. Instead, the horns were likely a sexual display to attract mates or intimidate rivals. (Related: "Bizarre Dinosaur Lured Mates With Bony Adornments.") New Utah Dinosaurs "Icing on the Cake" Several partial fossils of both Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops were unearthed in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, home of what was once the "lost continent" of Laramidia. During the Cretaceous, the central region of North America flooded, separating the eastern and western portions of the continent for about 30 million years. The western side effectively became its own distinct landmass. (See a prehistoric time line.) "If you were a time traveler and you went back to the late Cretaceous, you could take a boat from the Gulf of Mexico and sail all the way up to the Arctic Ocean and you wouldn't see land," Thomas Holtz, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, told National Geographic News. The region that was once Laramidia is now a hot bed of fossil discoveries, in part because of geological activity going on at the time, said Holtz, who was not affiliated with the present study. "The Rocky Mountains were actively forming. We had mountains being pushed up and torn apart. ... Sediment [was] washing downhill and providing what would eventually be sedimentary rock that could entomb all these fossils." (Related: "'Amazing' Dinosaur Trove Discovered in Utah.") In general, Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops are only the two most recent in a series of horned dinosaur discoveries from around the world, and the study authors believe that more new horned fossils will soon be unearthed. "The new Utah creatures," said study co-author Andrew Farke of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology, "are the icing on the cake." The new-dinosaur paper was published online this week in the journal PLoS One.[/release] [img]http://i.imgur.com/9153p.png[/img] [url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100922-new-species-dinosaurs-horned-utah-fossils-science/]Source[/url]

That blue one looks funky.

[quote]Kosmoceratops[/quote] [img]http://images.wikia.com/fairlyoddparents/en/images/2/2f/FairlyOddParents_Cosmo_01.jpg[/img] First thing that came to mind, despite the "k."

they look..... very silly

they look like they are not relevant

Well those are just artist beliefs of what they looked like, not like they're 100% accurate.

With all the recent news about stem cell research, cloning and shit, the first part of the title got me all excited.

[QUOTE]The new dinosaurs are members of the ceratopsids, the group of dinosaurs that includes Triceratops. The animals were generally four-legged herbivores with horns and bony frills rising from the backs of their heads.[/QUOTE] Didn't they theorize a little while ago that Triceratops aren't an actual species and that the fossils of them they found are actually the infants and children of another three-horned dinosaur? I don't remember if I read it somewhere else or on FP here.

How did I guess one of them would be called utahceratops.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;32476878]Didn't they theorize a little while ago that Triceratops aren't an actual species and that the fossils of them they found are actually the infants and children of another three-horned dinosaur? I don't remember if I read it somewhere else or on FP here.[/QUOTE] What you are referring to is the triceratops and the torosaurus. Ceratopsians are a family of dinosaurs which encompass many different dinosaur species. [editline]25th September 2011[/editline] Triceratops being the most famous in the family

If they weren't either stomping through a trailer park or terrorizing Mormons I don't care. Stop getting my hopes up, this is nothing like Jurassic Park. >:(

Why did I believe they were still alive?

[QUOTE=Joazzz;32476862]With all the recent news about stem cell research, cloning and shit, the first part of the title got me all excited.[/QUOTE] have you seen Jurassic park Edit: My point being that that is nothing to be excited about. :ohdear:

The top one looks like another Pentaceratops youngling. Jack Horner had a system that removed a huge chunk of these "New Species", because, by bone and age structure, they were simply Younger/Older versions of the Adult. Torosaurus and Zuniceratops are no longer counted as Ceratopsians/Dinosaurs. They are the Older/Younger forms of Triceratops.

badly worded title, i thought the dinos were still alive...

[QUOTE=Dongleberry;32476470]That blue one looks funky.[/QUOTE] The curly horns or whatever they are way up on its head reminds me of Frankenstein.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;32476878]Didn't they theorize a little while ago that Triceratops aren't an actual species and that the fossils of them they found are actually the infants and children of another three-horned dinosaur? I don't remember if I read it somewhere else or on FP here.[/QUOTE] Yeah, that's just Jack Horner trolling the scientific community yet again, the same guy who presented the theory that T-Rex was a scavenger. He does this every few years, then everyone tears his theory to shreds. Even if he's right (He's not), Torosaurus would just end up being a junior synonym to Triceratops. So Triceratops would still be named Triceratops.

Imagine how many other dinosaurs there are to discover and that blue one looks like he has a bowl cut

Misleading title. I wanted an actual dinosaur park and now i'm disappointed.

I want a pet dinosaur :(

How come they never found them before?

[QUOTE=silentjubjub;32481414]Edit: My point being that that is nothing to be excited about. :ohdear:[/QUOTE]What are you talking about? Terror, death and destruction are super cool! Yeah no.

[QUOTE=Aerkhan;32486098]How come they never found them before?[/QUOTE] The thing with Late Cretaceous Dinosaurs is they were EXTREMELY isolated. For whatever reason, a species only lived in one small area rather than roaming the entire continent. It'd be like each state in the US having it's own unique species of Deer that only occurred in that state. On top of that extremely small geographical range the animal has to die in the perfect spot for it to fossilize or the bones just turn to dust and if it dies out in the open somewhere then scavengers come along and scatter pieces of the carcass all over the place and then you just find one or two bones if you're lucky. There's plenty of Ceratopsians known from just the skull and nothing more.

Utahceratops huh. that's the shittiest name for a dinosaur i've ever heard.

[QUOTE=Parakon;32486536]Utahceratops huh. that's the shittiest name for a dinosaur i've ever heard.[/QUOTE] Say hello to [b]Minmi[/b]. [img]http://dinosaurs.findthebest.com/sites/default/files/426/media/images/Minmi_model_Canberra_email.jpg[/img] It's cool we are STILL finding new types of dinosaurs. I wonder if we'll ever find them all.

[QUOTE=Dragoshi1;32486831]Say hello to [b]Minmi[/b]. It's cool we are STILL finding new types of dinosaurs. I wonder if we'll ever find them all.[/QUOTE] Don't forget Irritator.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;32476878]Didn't they theorize a little while ago that Triceratops aren't an actual species and that the fossils of them they found are actually the infants and children of another three-horned dinosaur? I don't remember if I read it somewhere else or on FP here.[/QUOTE] Styracosaurus is part of that species but is not a Triceratops. It's different in a lot of ways.

[QUOTE=Dragoshi1;32486831]Say hello to [b]Minmi[/b]. [img]http://dinosaurs.findthebest.com/sites/default/files/426/media/images/Minmi_model_Canberra_email.jpg[/img] It's cool we are STILL finding new types of dinosaurs. I wonder if we'll ever find them all.[/QUOTE] We'll never find all of them. Heck there might be species dying out that we don't even know EXISTS YET

We do know they exist because of the fossils and shit. Were not sure what they looked like.

[QUOTE=Rocko's;32492013]We do know they exist because of the fossils and shit. Were not sure what they looked like.[/QUOTE] Actually there are a surprising number of specimens with preserved soft tissue which short of coloration gives us an excellent view of their build. But the main method of determining what they looked like is to examine the bones for scars left by muscle attachments, this creates a picture of the animal's build. Paleopathology also shows us how they lived and in rare cases what individuals were doing at the time of their death. Individuals such as the Allosaurus named Big Al show us that Allosaurus lived extremely violent lives and suffered dozens of serious injuries over their lifetimes, something supported by the hundreds of other Allosaurus specimens that also show severe injuries from accidents and fights with other Allosaurs and their prey. The same is true of virtually all Theropods including Tyrannosaurus. Aside from evidence of broken bones, infections and disease there's the examples of what an individual was doing when it died. Recently a site was discovered with a small Tyrannosaurid resembling the Asian genus Alioramus attacking a rather large Ceratopsian four times the weight of the Tyrannosaurid. In the attack the Tyrannosaurid bit hard enough for more than half of it's teeth to be ripped out and imbedded in the neck and back of the Ceratopsian. They ended up in a dry riverbed where at some point in the fight the Ceratopsian was able to kill it's attacker by smashing the Tyrannosaurid's skull in half before dying as it tried to crawl out of the riverbed, possibly of blood loss.