Essay: Two new dinosaurs, Utahceratops gettyi and Kosmoceratops richardsoni

For over a century, paleontologists have been collecting abundant dinosaur fossils from the Western Interior of North America, with many of these fossils found in rocks dating back to the final stages of the Cretaceous Period. Only recently, however, have we learned that most of these dinosaurs existed on a “lost continent” today referred to as ‘Laramidia”. (Switek, 2010)
In 2012, two new species of horned dinosaurs were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Southern Utah. The largest of the two new dinosaurs, Utahceratops gettyi, had a skull about 2.3 meters long. The first part of the name combines the origin of the find and ceratops, Greek for “horned face”. The second part of the name honors Mike Getty, the paleontology collections manager for the Utah Museum of Natural History and also the man who discovered the animal. In addition to have a large horn over the nose, the Utahceratops had short and blunt eyes that projected more to the side than upwards. (Switek, 2010)
The second of the new species is Kosmoceratops richardsoni. Here the first part of the name refers to kosmos, which is Latin for “ornate”, and ceratops which once again means “horned face” in Greek. The second part of the name refers to the man who discovered it, Scott Richardson. The Kosmoceratops had sideways oriented eye horns, and 15 horns, making it the most ornate dinosaur known to man (Levitt, 2012). The Kosmoceratops is one of the most amazing animals known to man, with an assortment of horns on the face and head of the animal. (Levitt, 2012)
These new dinosaurs were unearthed in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM)  in the southern part of Utah. The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is the most largely unexplored dinosaur boneyards in the United States. Back when these creatures were alive about 76 million years ago, this area was part of a larger landmass called Laramidia. Laramidia was formed over 95 million years ago when warm, shallow sea called the Western Interior Seaway flooded the central region of North America. (Choi, 2012)
Both of these new dinosaurs are part of a wave of discoveries made in the southern part of Laramidia. About 50 years ago, paleontologists began to notice that although they found major groups of dinosaurs throughout Laramidia, differents species appeared in the North and South of the landmass. Such provincialism seemed odd, given the small size of the continent. To compare, there were 5 rhino-to-elephant sized creatures that were found on the entire continent of Africa, whilst in Laramidia there have been over a dozen giant dinosaurs found on a continent about a quarter of the size of Africa. (Choi, 2012) Most of the dinosaurs that are known on the Laramidia continent were found in a narrow belt between the seaway to the east and the mountains to the west. Laramidia is the best known landmass for the entire age of Dinosaurs, with dig sites that run from Alaska all the way down into Mexico.
Around the 1960s, many paleontologists realized that the same major groups of dinosaurs seemed to be present all over the landmass, but there were different species of dinosaurs found in both the north and the south. This lead to the term “dinosaur provincialism”, which at the time was a very puzzling idea to many paleontologists. About 76 million years ago, there is a possibility that more than two dozen dinosaurs were living on a landmass about one-quarter the size of the other landmass. There are a few different options to explain this phenomenon. One option is that there was a greater abundance of food during the cretaceous period, coupled with the possibility that animals during that time period did not eat as much. Whatever the case may be, it appears that there had to be some kind of barrier that near Utah and Colorado that limited the exchange of dinosaurs species into the north and south. The possibility of mountains, or climatic barriers could have resulted in this. Testing of these ideas have been curtailed due to the a lack of dinosaurs in the southern part of Laramidia, until the recent findings in the GSENM. (Switek, 2010)
During the past decade, paleontologists have unearthed more than a dozen dinosaurs in the GSENM. In addition to finding the Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops, the collection includes other plant eating dinosaurs as well as armored ankylosaurs, and dome-headed  pachycephalosaurus, raptor-like carnivores, and to mega sized tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs. There have also been numerous fossils recovered from the dig, they have found fossil plants, traces of insects, clams, fish, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and many other mammals. All of these found fossils on the continent offers a direct glimpse at the entire ecosystem of Laramidia. One of the most remarkable things about the new fossils that have been unearthed on the continent, is that virtually all of the fossils are new to the scientific world. All of these findings lead to the confirmation of the hypothesis of provincialism. (Switek, 2012)
The past year has been a remarkable one for horned dinosaurs, with several new species named. The new Utah creatures are the icing on the cake, showing anatomy even more bizarre than typically expected for a group of animals known for its weird skulls. (Farke, 2012) Clearly many dinosaurs remain to be unearthed in the southern part of Utah. But, it is an exciting time for the world of paleontology and for the study of dinosaurs in general. (Sampson, 2012)