Two pint-sized relatives of the Triceratops have been discovered in Alberta! Why are we so excited about this? Because we think its super cool that we live so close to where the dinosaurs used to live (actually many dinosaur fossils have been discovered in North America.) But while we’re all excited about its location, scientists are more excited about the tiny size.
Measuring in at only about a meter long, these fossils are the smallest to ever be found in North America and one of the smallest plant-eating dinosaur to be found in history.
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History will soon be unveiling the two new species, named the Unescopceratops koppelhusae and Gryphoceratops morrisoni. Despite the artist’s friendly conception, paleontologists doubt that the two actually hung out together.
They’re estimating that the Unescopceratops lived about 75 million years ago, while the Gryphoceratops goes back about 83 million years.
But they weren’t both so small. The two-foot long Gryphoceratops was way smaller than the six-foot long/200 pound Unescopceratops. But even though the Unescopceratops was way larger than the Gryph, it’s still pretty small for its species.
Museum curator Michael Ryan explained a bit more about the importance of the find saying, “These dinosaurs fill important gaps in the evolutionary history of small-bodied horned dinosaurs that lack the large horns and frills of relatives like Triceratops from North America. Although horned dinosaurs originated in Asia, our analysis suggests that leptoceratopsids radiated to North America and diversified here, since the new species, Gryphoceratops, is the earliest record of the group on this continent.”
If you haven’t already started digging for fossils in your back yard, we recommend doing it now.