US paleontologists found a new species of dinosaur, with four horns, which lived 77 million years ago.
The discovery, which was made in the National Park Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, in the west of the country, it was revealed Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
This herbivore that would measure six to eight meters high and weigh between one and two tons, was baptized "Machairoceratops cronusi".
The authors of the publication scientists say it is very rare to find fossils of this family of dinosaurs in this region of the United States. Generally they found in the northern states like Alaska, Montana and Canada.
This dinosaur, dating from the Cretaceous period (between 145.5 million and 65.5 million years) evolved into a part of the American continent called Laramidia, which was then separated from the rest of what is now North America by sea.
The found fossilized skull is different from the other dinosaurs of the same family have been found in the north of this region, suggesting that these dinosaurs lived in two separate regions and formed two subgroups that evolved differently explain paleontologists .
The dinosaurs of this family, called centrosaurine ceratopsids, had horns, spikes and shells to protect your neck.
"The Machairoceratops is unique among centrosaurines because they also had two large curved horns behind the head pointing down and were part of the bony shell protective of his neck," he said in a statement Erik Lund, a scientist at Ohio State University and principal author of the paper on this discovery.