About 74 million years ago, the now-arid landscape of northwestern New Mexico was covered with jungles and marshes that bordered a warm sea — and roamed by a massive horned dinosaur related to triceratops.
That’s the conclusion drawn by researchers from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, where a fossil first unearthed in the 1970s has been identified as a new genus and species of dinosaur. Bisticeratops froeseorum was named in part for the region where it was found — and in part for an electronic-music pioneer.
Bisticeratops was a horned, plant-eating dinosaur, or ceratopsian, from the same group as the famous triceratops, with an estimated body length of about 18 feet.
The fossil includes most of the skull. The skull shows bite marks from a large predatory dinosaur, probably a tyrannosaur, although it is uncertain whether this was from active predation while Bisticeratops was alive or due to scavenging after it died.
It’s the latest of several dinosaur finds in the area, which was reportedly home to multiple unique species of the horned vegetarians. Bisticeratops froeseorum also is described in the latest edition of the Bulletin of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
The fossil was discovered in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area, which is home to badlands and unique rock formations and is largely overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Its name incorporates the Navajo words for “among the adobe formations” and “standing crane,” a nod to petroglyphs of cranes in the region.
Though the dinosaur’s genus name points to where the skull was found, its species name is a nod to one of paleontologist Sebastian Dalman’s favorite bands, Tangerine Dream, according to a news release. The groundbreaking electronic music group was founded and led by the late Edgar Froese, a German experimental musician whose signature synthesizers and atmospheric vocals proved a major influence for the genre — and now paleontology.
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