An unusual new species of dinosaur discovered in a Montana fossil provides a long-sought link between a primitive group of dinos in Asia and those that roamed North America, experts say. The newfound species is a very early form of ceratopsian, whose descendants are best known for their fearsome horns and flashy neck frills. The ancient animal revealed by the fossil, however, had no horns and walked on two legs instead of four, scientists report. Moreover, the dino had extra teeth in its beaklike mouth that had never before been seen in an American specimen. Dubbed Cerasinops, the fossilized female amounts to a missing link between two dinosaur groups that lived half a world apart some 80 million years ago, said Brenda Chinnery-Allgeier, a University of Texas paleontologist who identified the new species. “Cerasinops is exciting because of the traits that she hassome are known only in Asian groups, and other are known only from North American groups,” she said in an e-mail to National Geographic News. While the newfound species had the teeth of an Asian ceratopsian, she explained, it had chewing mechanisms that were unique to American dinos. “The new dinosaur shows a direct link between Asian and North American horned dinosaurs that has been looked for for a long time,” Chinnery-Allgeier said. “We knew that [the two groups] were related, but we didn’t have any fossils that showed a mixture of characteristics like this and thus [demonstrated] the split between the Asian group and the North American group.”
National Geographic
“Missing Link” Dinosaur Discovered in Montana
(Oct. 2)
