Dinosaur 'Hellboy' Fossil is Closely Related to Tricerotops with its Crown of Horns

About 10 years ago, researchers stumbled across some bones sticking out of a cliff along the Oldman River in Canada. Now, they've officially announced that these bones belonged to a nearly intact skull of an unusual horned dinosaur.

"The specimen comes from a geographic region of Alberta where we have no found horned dinosaurs before, so from the onset we knew it was important," said Caleb Brown, one of the researchers, in a news release. "However, it was not until the specimen was being slowly prepared from the rocks in the laboratory that the full anatomy was uncovered, and the bizarre suite of characters revealed. Once it was prepared it was obviously a new species, and an unexpected one at that. Many horned-dinosaur researchers who visited the museum did a double take when they first saw it in the laboratory."

So what made this horned dinosaur different? It was the size and shape of its facial horns and the shield-like frill at the back of its skull. It's similar in many respects to Triceratops. However, its nose horn is taller and the two horns over its eyes are tiny. The dinosaur's most distinctive feature, though, is the frill. This frill includes a halo of large pentagonal plates radiating outward, as well as a central spike.

The new dinosaur has been named Regaliceratops peterhewsi. However, researchers have nicknamed it "Hellboy" for the horns on its head.

While the dinosaur is intriguing, it also has implications for dinosaur horns in general. It's long been known that horned dinosaurs fall into one of two groups: the Chasmosaurines, with a small horn over the nose, larger horns over the eyes, and a long frill, and the Centrosaurines, characterized by a large horn over the nose, small horns over the eyes, and a short frill.

"This new species is a Chasmosaurine, but it has ornamentation more similar to Centosaurines," said Brown. "It also comes from a time period following the extinction of the Centrosaurines."

The findings reveal a bit more about these horned dinosaurs in addition to revealing the features of a new species.

The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.

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