Paleontologists have identified the fossil of a horned dinosaur the size of a crow that is the oldest of its kind ever discovered in North America.
Scientists discovered the dinosaur skull in Montana that represents the first horned dinosaur from the North American Early Cretaceous that they can identify to the species level.
Andrew Farke from Raymond M Alf Museum of Paleontology and colleagues named the dinosaur Aquilops americanus, which exhibits definitive neoceratopsian features and is closely related to similar species in Asia.
The skull is comparatively small, measuring 84 mm long, and is distinguished by several features, including a strongly hooked rostral bone, or beak-like structure, and an elongated and sharply pointed cavity over the cheek region.
When alive, the authors estimate it was about the size of a crow.
The discovery, combined with neoceratopsian fossil records from elsewhere, allows the authors to support a late Early Cretaceous (113-105 million years ago) intercontinental migratory event between Asia and North America, as well as support for a complex set of migratory events for organisms between North America and Asia later in the Cretaceous.
However, to better reconstruct the timing and mode of these events, additional fieldwork will be necessary, researchers said.
"Aquilops lived nearly 20 million years before the next oldest horned dinosaur named from North America," said Farke.
"Even so, we were surprised that it was more closely related to Asian animals than those from North America," Farke added.
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
