Researchers established that Aquilpos was the oldest horned dinosaur species that lived in North America based on a recently discovered fossil.
Many species of dinosaurs lived on the continent of North America a long time ago, but researchers want to discover how they got there on the first place. Recently discovered information, from the investigation of a horned dinosaur about the size of a crow, has revealed that the species came from Asia somewhere between 113 million and 105 million years ago.
Experts initially discovered the skull of this dinosaur in 1997 in Montana. This was an incredible find given that researchers discovered only dozens of teeth, a tail and bones of this species also called neoceratopsians. A newer species related to neceratopsians are called Aquiops americanus and lived about 107 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous.
The leader of the study, a paleontologist Andrew Farke said that they finally found the a complete specimen of a horned dinosaur and he finds it to be more interesting that what they found is not even related to other horned dinosaurs that could be found in North America.
The name Aquilops is Latin for “eagle face”. This species is suspected to be related to dinosaurs found in Asia such as Leptoceratops gracilis and Archaeoceratops ashimai.
The fact that Aquilops is identical to asian animals lead the scientists to develop and stand by the idea that almost 11 million years ago many animals have migrated from Asia to North America.
It is said that other species of horned dinosaur lived in North America. For example, 40 million years after Aquilops, there was a species called Triceratops. These were larger dinosaurs that could have reached 25.000 in weight.
Scientists say that the dinosaur they found had the size of the skill of 84 mm and might have had a weight of 3.5 pounds.
Since experts have found too few bones or fossils of horned dinosaurs, they cannot certainly say much about the earlier species that may have lived on the continent of North America, but this latest find has put them on the right track to unravel more about the mysteries of horned dinosaur species that may have left Asia to migrate on the continent.
