Team discovers new dinosaur species with Buffalo-like horns

A new species of armored dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana, has been discovered by paleontologists Bill and Kris Parsons, husband and wife research associates of the Buffalo Museum of Science.

The newly described armored dinosaur is a transitional species of ankylosaur, called Tatankacephalus cooneyorum. The Parsons' 1997 find of 90 percent of a complete skull on a hillside is documented in the October 2009 issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Ankylosaurs are are protected by armour plates with two rows of sharp spikes on each side of their head, and skulls thick enough to protect them from even the sharpest-toothed predators. Bill Parsons remarked that this is the first member of Ankylosauridae to be found within the Early Cretaceous Cloverly Geologic Formation. He characterized the fossil as a transitional evolutionary form between the earlier Jurassic ankylosaurs and the better known Late Cretaceous ankylosaurs. The skull, heavily protected by two sets of lateral horns, two thick domes at the back and smaller thickenings around the nasal region, has been illustrated by Parsons, who is a scientific illustrator for the Buffalo Museum of Science and a widely published freelance dinosaur illustrator. His interpretation is based on the theory by Museum of the Rockies paleontologist John R. Horner that ankylosaurs sported an outer keratinous sheathing, similar to modern bird beaks and turtle shells. Parsons shows Tatankacephalus ornamented with complex, colorful patterns rather than the comparatively plain and drab appearance depicted in earlier ankylosaur reconstructions. The Parsons' new dinosaur was named Tatankacephalus--a Latin word meaning "Buffalo head"--in honor of the city of Buffalo, N.Y., and because the short horns on the back of its skull resemble a modern buffalo's horns. Another possible paleontological first may be this discovery, preparation, researching, and publishing on a new dinosaur taxon by an established dinosaur illustrator.