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Have you ever thought about what you would name a species?
Steven Jasinski, of Harrisburg University’s Department of Environmental Science and Sustainability, has had the honor to actually name a dinosaur more than once.
Jasinski named a dinosaur, dineobellator notohesperus, in the spring of 2020.
As a commentator and fellow professor stated, “until 2004, no dromaeosaurid had been named from the Edmontonian and Lancian faunal ages in North America.”
That was pretty cool but then in 2021, Jasinski along with other researchers discovered a new horned dinosaur.
They found the dinosaur species in New Mexico, and it is believed to have lived 82 million years ago.
The new species is: Menefeeceratops sealeyi.
“Menefeeceratops not only provides us more data on the variety of horned dinosaurs that were alive, but potentially, and more importantly, it represents the oldest known member of a group of dinosaurs known as the centrosaurine ceratopsids while further suggesting these dinosaurs evolved to the south, potentially in the southwestern United States, and later migrated farther north before giving rise to dinosaurs such as Styracosaurus,” Jasinski said in a statement released by the university.
The dinosaur is thought to have had a frilled head and beaked face, and predates the famous Triceratops, according to a paper Jasinski and his team recently published regarding their discovery.The following is an abstract from the Janinski and his team's paper:
Although it was originally described over two decades ago, newly prepared portions of the Menefee Formation skeleton and reinterpretations of previously known morphology, in addition to newly described specimens have provided new information on ceratopsids, and centrosaurines in particular. These new data allow for a thorough reassessment of the specimen and the erection of a new taxon: Menefeeceratops sealeyi gen. et sp. nov., potentially the oldest recognized member of Centrosaurinae.
The fossil specimen of the new species, including multiple bones from one individual, was originally discovered in Cretaceous rocks of the Menefee Formation in northwestern New Mexico by Paul Sealey, a research associate of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in 1996. He is also credited for the discovery.
The complete research paper by Jasinski and his team is available here.
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