Outlandish species alert: A dinosaur with 15 horns?
Scientists in Utah have discovered the remains of two spectacularly unusual dinosaurs. A concise guide

Fossil hunters have unearthed the remains of two new dinosaur species that roamed Utah's swamps 76 million years ago. Here's a brief guide to what exactly they found:
What are the two new species?
Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops, which have been classified (for obvious reasons) in the horned-dinosaur family which also includes the Triceratops.
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What did they look like?
Kosmoceratops, whose hulking head sprouted 15 horns, was about 15 feet long, the size of a small car. Scott Sampson, the study leader at the Utah Museum of Natural History, calls it "one of the most amazing animals known." Utahceratops was 30 percent longer with a massive, 7-foot head with its own array of horns, including two that swoop out sideways like a bison's. Sampson likens it to "a giant rhino with a ridiculously supersized head."
How did these species use such a wealth of horns?
Most likely to attract potential mates, not as weapons. "These are effectively the peacock feathers... of the dinosaur world," says Sampson.
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How did scientists find the new species?
A team of fossil hunters found skulls of both species in a remote 1.9-million-acre expanse of high desert in southern Utah known as the Giant Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Sampson says the area is "one of the country's last great, largely unexplored dinosaur boneyards." It was the home of the "lost continent" of Laramidia, a distinct land mass created by floods during the Crestaceous period (144 to 65 million years ago) that divided North America in two.
Sources: AOL News, Guardian, Science Codex, National Geographic, University of California Museum of Paleontology
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