New horned dinosaur found near T or C

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Researchers at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science and two other institutions have described a new horned dinosaur that lived in New Mexico during the Cretaceous period.

The fossil specimen of the sierraceratops turneri was discovered by an NMMNHS field crew on billionaire media mogul Ted Turner’s Sierra County ranch near Truth or Consequences. The crew found parts of the sierraceratops’s skull and lower jaws, forearm, shoulder, pelvis, vertebrae and ribs in Late Cretaceous rocks of the Hall Lake Formation.

Two NMMNHS researchers – and researchers from Harrisburg University and University of Bath – published the findings in the Sept. 29 Cretaceous Research journal.

The sierraceratops’s skull was around 5 feet long and its body length was around 15 feet long. It is a relative of other ceratopsids that only inhabited the Southwest, including the triceratops that the sierraceratops predates.

The dinosaur is one of many North American dinosaur discoveries in recent years. Paleontologists have found new species as they have diverged into territories away from common hunting grounds.