Presenting Europe's First Horned Dino

Galvasean

It has often been wondered if the ceratopsans ever lived in Europe. This has now been confirmed with the discovery of Ajkaceratops kozmai, a small horned dinosaur only one meter long that lived in hungary.

the find raises an important new question. During the late Cretaceous, Europe was an archipelago of islands stretching across what geologists call the Tethys Ocean. And the region of western Hungary where the fossils were found was probably located on one of those islands. So how did Ajkaceratops, which the authors say resembles some Asian ceratopsians and might have been related to them, get there?

Ősi and his colleagues suggest that Ajkaceratops might have island-hopped its way from Asia. According to this scenario, Ősi says, “our ceratopsian was able to swim short distances between islands and so reached newer and newer areas westwards."

Full story here.