A newly - describe species of pachycephalosaurid calledPlatytholus clemensithat populate around 68 million age ago during the Late Cretaceous may have rocked some mythic ceratin headgear , a late paper detail the depth psychology of a fond skull has revealed .

call MOR 2915 , the skull was rule in 2011 by work writer John R. " Jack " Horner , of Chapman University in Orange , California , in a “ topically slumped siltstone lense in the lower third of theHell CreekFormation [ … ] on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Garfield County , northeastern Montana , ” the study authors compose .

Pachycephalosaur skull are like “ a bowling ball in the fossil record book , ” bailiwick author Mark Goodwin , of the University of California , Berkeley , explained in astatement . “ Their skull roll up around , get buried , and when exposed on the surface , they ’re very robust , so they can withstand a lot of weathering and erosion sitting out there . More than once , people have walk over an area all summer and discovered that what they thought was just a rock , because it looks like a glacial sett , turned out to be a really prissy bonce . ”

The agreement of blood vas in the ancient noggin speck at how thisdinoaccessorized . “ What we see are these vertical canals coming to the surface , which evoke that there might be ceratin on top , but it ’s orient vertically , ” Horner said . “ I think these pachycephalosaur had something on top of their head that we do n’t bonk about . I do n’t think they were just bonce . I call up there was some elaborate show on top of their head . ”

“ We do n’t know the exact shape of what was covering the bonce , but it had this vertical component that we interpret as covered with ceratin , ” explained Goodwin . Keratin is a protein that also make up your tomentum andfingernails .

“ The combination of cranial histology after thin - segment the skull and CT scanning give way us a much richer torso of data and form a groundwork for our conjecture that there was a keratinous screening over the dome , ” Goodwin continued . “ We know the domed stadium was covered with something , and we make a possibility , at least in this taxonomic category , that it had a vertical structural element , unlikeTriceratops , T. rexand other dinosaur , which had gruelling skin or ceratin intimately cover the bone . ”

The Modern specie was namedPlatytholus clemensiafter palaeontologist William Clemens , whodiedaged 88 in 2020 .

equate to other pachycephalosaurids from around the same meter period found in Hell Creek , the authors observe thatPlatytholus clemensiwas “ intermediate in sizing between the small - bodiedSphaerotholusspecies and the largest pachycephalosaurid , Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensisthat are well represented by numerous specimen from the Hell Creek Formation . ”

MOR 2915 had an injury to its skull , which is “ credibly the first unequivocal grounds of harm in the head of any pachycephalosaurus , where the ivory was really ejected from the bonce somehow and healed partially in life sentence , ” Goodwin explained . “ Something attain the top of this hombre ’s head and damaged it , and it was something that was stern , ” Horner added .

However , the two are sceptical that it could have been the resultant of the dinosaurs headbutt each other . “ That ’s the first place everybody wants to go – have ’s barge in them together . And , you know , we just do n’t see any grounds of it , histologically , ” Horner said . “ I do n’t see any reasonableness to turn dinosaur into mammalian , rather than just prove to figure out what they might be doing as wench - like reptiles . ”

This discovery point that pachycephalosaurs were more various before theChicxulubimpact than we thought , the researchers write in the paper , and “ that they may have had tiered niches in part by sizing , both of which have implications on the ecological dynamics of these dinosaur communities in a fundamental stop of their account . ”

The study is published in theJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology .