The Triceratops and Torosaurus have long been considered the kings of dinosaurs with horns. However, a new discovery has been extended to the evolutionary family tree of these giant enough to to identify the ancestor. A new species discovered by paleontologists seem to reign among the beasts horned long before they did their best known descendants. That makes it the oldest known member of the family.
The new species, called Titanoceratops, Triceratops rivaled in size, with an estimated weight of about 7 tons and a huge skull of eight feet long.
The Titanoceratops, who lived in America during the late Cretaceous period, for about 74 million years, is the first triceratopsiano known, suggesting that the group evolved into the large size more than five million years earlier than previously thought, according to Nicholas Longrich, paleontologist Yale University made the discovery. The finding provides new light on the origins of these amazing little-known horned beasts.
The new species is very similar to Triceratops, but with a longer nose and horns a bit larger.
Titanoceratops Longrich believes that is the ancestor of Triceratops and Torosaurus, and the latter two species were divided into several millions of years after the emergence of the Titanoceratops.
Titanoceratops is likely to exist only for about a million years, estimates Longrich, while triceratopsiana family existed in total ten million years and extended beyond its original geographic range, reaching as far north as Canada.
Source: noticiasdelaciencia.com
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