A new dinosaur species has been discovered – not in a dig site, but in the Canadian Museum of Nature.
Scientists have named the dinosaur Xenoceratops foremostensis, which means “alien horned-face,” because it has a strange pattern of horns on its head. They believe the herbivore was about six metres long and weighed more than two tons.
The initial discovery was made in 2003 by Dr. Michael Ryan of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Dr. David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum. The paleontologists discovered skull fragments that were sitting on a museum shelf since being unearthed in Alberta in 1958.
Ryan and Evans found other pieces several years later in an old plaster field jacket.
They published their research in the October 2012 issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.
Dr. Kieran Shepherd, curator of palaeobiology for the Museum of Nature, says he anticipates the discovery will draw researchers to the museum.
“It’s a new species, a new holotype, the first of its kind, so it’s a very important specimen,” he says. “It’s not a full dinosaur, so it won’t go on public display, but it means a lot for behind-the-scenes research.”
He says the discovery is already changing what paleontologists previously believed about ceratops dinosaurs. From the age of the fossils, paleontologists have learned these dinosaurs roamed the earth earlier than originally thought.
Shepherd says the creature’s remains come from the “dinosaur rush” in the first years of the 20th century.
“Museums went out and collected a lot more material than they could really look at and investigate at the time,” he says. “We have them in our research facility and every once in a while we open them up and investigate.”
The fragments are currently housed in the museum’s research and collections facility in Gatineau.
Shepherd says he considers the facility a treasure trove for researchers. “There are probably a lot of other dinosaurs in our facility just waiting to be discovered.”