Image by Meridith Wolfe

This past week saw the publication of a paper about our new dinosaur named Cerasinops hodgkissi. Cerasinops means "Red Face," hodgkissi is to honor Wilson Hodgkiss of Choteau, Montana, for allowing us to collect this dinosaur from his land, for the Museum of the Rockies. The dinosaur was named and described by our former Post-Doctoral Fellow, Brenda Chinnery, and I.  This is a dinosaur skeleton that I found in 1984, and had in our collections all these years as we waited for someone to come along who knew about protoceratopsian dinosaurs. Brenda was this person.  Cerasinops is a very important new dinosaur as it has characteristics that show a close relationship with dinosaurs in Asia and North America.  It is also the first protoceratosian dinosaur that apparently walked on its hind legs (bipedal) rather than on all four (quadrapedal) like other horned dinosaurs.  This winter we will put parts of the Cerasinops skeleton on display in the museum.