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science
dinosaurs
7778467
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# New armoured dinosaur with four foot horns on its head found by scientists
## An armoured dinosaur as big as a tank that was even a match for
Tyrannosaurus Rex has been discovered by scientists.
![New armoured dinosaur with four foot horns on its head found by scientists
][1]
The plant-eater was an ancestor of the famous three-horned Triceratops Photo:
PA
[![Richard Alleyne][2]][3]
By [Richard Alleyne][4], Science Correspondent 5:00PM BST 28 May 2010
[Comments][5]
The giant rhino like creature, which was 22 ft long, was so formidable because
it had two four foot horns sprouting from its head which could gouge even the
largest predator.
Fossil bones of an adult animal, which weighed four to five tons and stood six
to seven feet tall at the shoulder and hip, were recovered from a site in the
state of Coahuila, southern Mexico, in 2003.
The plant-eater named Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna was an ancestor of the
famous three-horned Triceratops.
Like other horned dinosaurs, or ceratopsids, it had a large bony plate behind
its head which would have acted as a shield.
But Coahuilaceratops' most notable feature are the two enormous horns that jut
out
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from above its eyes. They are the biggest horns ever uncovered.
Scientists believe the horns were most often used in mating or jousting
contests rather than to fight off predators.<
Lead researcher Dr Mark Loewen, from the Utah Museum of Natural History in
Salt Lake City, US, said: "The horned dinosaurs are an extraordinary example
of vertebrate evolution.
"They evolved and diversified ... along a thin strip of land that stretched
from Alaska to Mexico. Finding this horned dinosaur so far south in Mexico
offers us a different picture of what the ancestors of Triceratops were like."
A description of the dinosaur appears in a book, New Perspectives on Horned
Dinosaurs, published this week by Indiana University Press.
The site where the fossils were discovered, called the Cerro del Pueblo
Formation, is in an arid Mexican desert.
However 72 million years ago the region was a humid estuary with lush
vegetation.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/dinosaurs/7778467/New-armoured-dinosaur-
with-four-foot-horns-on-its-head-found-by-scientists.html
Telegraph
## [Dinosaurs][13]
* ### [News »][14]
* ### [Science »][15]
* ### [Science News »][16]
* ### [Richard Alleyne »][17]
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### [The 'Mojoceratops' is named][7]
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