Utahceratops

Utahceratops was a large chasmosaurine dinosaur discovered in the fossil-rich Kaiparowits Formation of southern Utah. Living approximately 76 million years ago on the isolated landmass of Laramidia, it grew to around 6 metres in length and weighed roughly 3 tonnes. Its skull was enormous, measuring more than 2 metres from beak to frill. The ornamentation was unique: rather than pointing upwards or forwards, its short brow horns stuck outward laterally, reminiscent of the horns of a modern bison. A blunt nasal horn sat above its large nostrils, while its expansive, shield-like parietal frill was lined with modest bony nodes along the rim. As a quadrupedal plant-eater, Utahceratops shared its warm, swampy habitat with hadrosaurs, tyrannosaurs, and fellow ceratopsians, relying on powerful jaw muscles to shear tough swamp plants.

Its brow horns projected sideways like the horns of modern bison rather than pointing forward.

Where and when

Utahceratops lived in the Late Cretaceous, from 76.4 to 75.5 million years ago (Campanian age). Its remains come from United States, in the Kaiparowits Formation.

The numbers

Length 6 m (estimates run from 5.5 to 6.5 m). Mass about 3 t. Hip height about 1.9 m. That is 3.5 human-lengths, or 0.54 of a double-decker bus. These are estimates from partial skeleton; fields marked estimated by the site are length, mass, hip height.

Compare Utahceratops with a bus Place on the timeline