Sunday, August 30, 2009

Possible New Triceratops

In July, I joined some digging buddies to help Otis Kline of the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum in Glendive, Montana finish the excavation of a large Triceratops. The vertebrae are 20 to 30 % larger than average. But the skull is odd. Based on the left squamosal, the nose horn and one brow horn and part of what appers to be a section of frill down the center of the skull, I am willing to say that it may be a new species. For such a large animal, one would expect the brow horn, the ones over the eyes, to be as much as 48 inches. This one is only 12 inches. But the nose horn is almost 12 inches which would be the right length for this size of skull. We will publish a sketch I did of it to get an idea of what it may turn out to look like.