Mexican scientists discovered a new species of dinosaur after a decade of research in the desert of the northern state of Coahuila, the National Science and Technology Council (Concyt) has announced .
The discovery of the new species was led by paleontologist Hector Rivera Sylva and biologist Jose Ruben Guzman Gutierrez, both scientists of the Coahuila Desert Museum (MUDE).
The new dinosaur has been christened Yehuecauhceratops mudei, a name that comes from the Nahuatl word "yehuecauh" (ancient), the Greek "ceratops" (face with horns), and "mudei" in honor of the museum, he said.
Guzman said that when they were cleaning off a part of the skull, they noticed a protuberance that made it different, because no other ceratopsid dinosaur species discovered in North America "had that characteristic."
The scaly bone had a "protuberance or 'beak' that showed that this was something new," Rivera said.
The paleontologist said another aspect worth noting was the size of the new species, 3 or 4 metres long, compared with the 9 metres of a Triceratops, the best-known representative of the ceratopsids.
That area of Coahuila was a refuge for different species of dinosaurs, which developed differently from those living in what is today the US and Canada.
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