The Horniest Animal Ever

Fossil collectors recently uncovered a little something rather uncommon, the fossilized remains of a 76 million year, or so, old prehistoric beast which could easily hold the particular title of undisputed horniest beast, both living and extinct, which has ever before stepped on the face of the planet.

As explained earlier,the animal existed some 76,000,000 years ago (that's 76 million years for you and me) in the moist, damp marshes and swamps of what today we refer to as southern Utah.

The creature remarkably had 15 full-sized horns on it's cranium. The creature, now referred to as Kosmoceratops, possessed a colossal 80 inch head, seemed to be 200 inches long, or rather over seventeen feet long from muzzle to tail and hailing from Souther Utah & weighed in at about two and one half tonnes.

"These creatures are fundamentally over-sized rhinos with a whole lot more horns on their heads. They had huge heads relative to their body size, " Scott Sampson of the Utah Museum of Natural History was quoted as saying.

"Kosmoceratops, was from the same line, or family tree as Triceratops, it wielded one horn above its nose, one over each eye, one protruding from each cheek bone and a row of ten across the frill at the back of its head.

"As far as we know it's the most ornate-headed dinosaur ever found, with so many well-developed horns on its head." Sampson told the Guardian newspaper.

For several decades there was speculation in the scientific community as to what intent dinosaur horns served. Was the heavily horned Kosmoceratops wielding it's FIFTEEN horns for defensive measures or more-so for the adoration of any pretty girl Kosmoceratops.

"In this case, we think these horns were really about competing for mates and more akin to peacock feathers or deer antlers, where it's males trying to attract females or intimidate other males." Sampson said.

"Sometimes it's good to have a way of visually ranking yourself relative to other animals. You can avoid unnecessary conflicts and that is probably what they were doing with all these bony bells and whistles."

Two skulls of which both belonged to Kosmoceratops' were obtained in a considerably bit of extremely tough geography in southern Utah which is called "The Giant Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

"This is one of the last, largely unexplored dinosaur treasure troves on the continent. We have to hike many miles to find these specimens in the first place and have to use helicopters to get them out," Said Sampson.

During the times when the Kosmoceratops strolled the planet earth the majority of Northern America was covered in a shallow sea which in turn separated the continent straight into 2 different land masses.

Kocmoceratops populated the land mass which has come to be known as the "lost continent" and to answer the question on every person's thoughts, Kocmoceratops had been an herbivore and lived it's existence eating vegetation.

"At the time, this was very much a swamp environment and very lush. The climate was more Mediterranean. It would have been a great place to hang out except for all the tyrannosaurs," said Sampson.

So there you have it, the worlds just acquired a whole new dinosaur which in turn also happens to

be incredibly horny.

By: Rob Korczak