May 19, 2010
Diabloceratops Gets Ready for its Debut
A sketch of the skull of Diabloceratops eatoni. From FossilWiki
At the end of last summer, on my way out of Salt Lake City, Utah, I encountered a dinosaur I had never seen before in the halls of the Utah Museum of Natural History. Lying on its side was an impressive skull bristling with horns, and the placard identified it as an as-yet-unpublished creature informally known as the “Last Chance Ceratopsian” for the name of the stream near which it was found in the southern part of the state. (Though, if you read Scott Sampson’s Dinosaur Odyssey, you got a brief preview of it on page 34.) Now, after numerous delays in publishing the book in which its description is contained, this 26-horned dinosaur is ready to make its public debut.
Described by paleontologists Jim Kirkland and Donald de Blieux, the 80-million-year-old dinosaur is called Diabloceratops eatoni, with the genus name evoking its “devilish” appearance and its species name honoring Weber State University paleontologist Jeffrey Eaton. A long-time friend of Kirkland’s, Eaton is a fossil mammal specialist who has eschewed going after a few big dinosaurs in favor of studying the many, many fossil mammal specimens which lived alongside them during the Mesozoic, so it was only natural for Kirkland to “get back” at his friend by naming a dinosaur after him.
Even better, there may be a second species of Diabloceratops waiting to be described from the Cretaceous strata of southern Utah. While Kirkland and de Blieux were not able to confidently give it a taxonomic assignment, they mention a second skull which is very similar to, yet slightly distinct from, the better-preserved “Last Chance” specimen. As Scott Sampson has stressed on his blog, there is still a lot of interesting new material being found from these sites, and who knows what else will be found?
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Such an awesome skull. Though i think a cast or model of it has been on display at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh for a couple years now. But it is yet another reason i want to search the late cretaceous of Utah. So much to find and learn from that place.
Doug – are you sure you’re not confusing Diabloceratos with a possible cast of Styracosaurus and/or Achelousaurus?
A cast of this skull has been displayed at the annual Society of Paleontology meetings for several years now, simply referred to as the “last chance” skull, prior to officially being named.
I keep forgetting that Scott has his own blog now.
Assuming the book isn’t pushed back anymore (scheduled for release in just…9 days!), I’ll finally get a chance to read about the mystery ceratopsian I’d read about on the interwebs some three or four years ago. Exciting! I’ll be interested to see where it falls out, phylogenetically speaking.
The Ogden paper seems to have jumped the gun in their eagerness to announce that the species was too be named after their own Jeff Eaton. Jeff will be in Europe when the paper comes out, so Weber State Univ. pr people (not Jeff) jumped the gun with local paper. It will be official May 28th or so we alllll hope. The U. of U. will be announcing a cool new ceratopsian from Mexico with the books release. They will unveil the very cool skull constructed by Rob Gaston (the craftsman that cast our skull)at that time. After getting our possible Tenontosaurus out of the ground, in early June, we might do an announcement on our paper on forensic entomology of Protoceratops skulls from Mongollia (ie. Maggots in Mongolia!). The publication of this new book on horned-dinosaurs will result in a barrage of announcements regarding new discoveries from all over. Should be fun.
220mya: nope. Diabloceratops for sure. Unmistakable: http://www.flickr.com/photos/via/2709335102/
[...] Noel delivered the new cast of a Diabloceratops skull, made for us by a company in Colorado. Diabloceratops was a plant eater who lived 81 million years ago. The BLM info sheet on this guy describes him as a “cranky Cretaceous critter” that was “the size of a mini-van, with a lavish headdress, intimidating horns and a grouchy disposition.” (For more on Diablo‘s discovery on the Monument, click here.) [...]