The “ eagle - faced American,”Aquilops americanus , was a Corvus corax - sized horned dinosaur with spiky impertinence and a foul little bump on its beak . And the fossilist who examined its fossilised skull fragments arecalling it“a really cute small dinosaur . ” At 106 million year erstwhile , the dry pint - sizedAquilopsis also the oldest horned dinosaur described in North America — beating the previous record by nigh 20 million years . Thefindingswere published inPLOS ONEthis week .
Over a X ago , paleontologists working in the Cloverly Formation of Carbon County , Montana , unearthed the fond skull , humbled jaw , and teeth of a low horned dinosaur . old work has shown that tusk dinosaurs ( or neoceratopsians ) originated and diversified in the Early Cretaceous , but findings from that sentence period of time in the North American fossil phonograph record were confine to set-apart tooth and bits of the post - cranial skeleton . dear triceratops showed up much later .
Now , based on several features — including a hook on its beak - alike structure ( or rostral off-white ) and a long , charge cavity over its brass — the skull belongs to a antecedently strange metal money , according toAndrew Farke from the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontologyand fellow worker .
The genus name is derived from the Latin Aquila degli Abruzzi , intend “ eagle , ” and the Hellenic ops , which means “ face . ” These refer to the dependent beak on its skull . “ No theme what it was for ( fight back ? travail ? something else ? ) , ” Farke writes in aPLOS blog , “ but it for sure was cool . ” The metal money name means “ American ” in Latin , to reflect its status as the earliest , unequivocal neoceratopsian in North America .
The small skull is only about 84 millimetre long . AndAquilopswas probably no longer than 0.6 meters and weigh about 1.6 kilograms—“about as much as a large bunny rabbit,”Farke tells National Geographic . The skull size , development of the teeth , and fusion of the bones suggest that the animal was youthful but emphatically not a babe . It was probable a adolescent . Using what ’s known about skeleton in the closet of close relatives , the squad was able to reconstruct the relaxation of the dinosaur . The body architectural plan of early horned dinosaurs was fairly cautious , according to Farke : heavy mind , long hindlimbs , shorter forelimb , mostly biped , long tail .
Surprisingly , Aquilopsisn’t that closely related to later horned dinos from North America . Rather , it ’s more closely related to dinosaur who populate in Asia at around the same clock time — which supports the musical theme of an intercontinental migratory event between 113 million and 105 million age ago in the late Early Cretaceous . " Aquilopslived about 20 million class before the next oldest horn dinosaur named from North America , " Farke say in anews exit . " Even so , we were surprised that it was more close related to Asian animals than those from North America . "
trope : Brian Engh , CC - BY . Check out more of coauthor Engh ’s Aquilops photographs and artworkhereandhere .
