Laramidia

In a "Lost Continent" that once covered much of the land now occupied by U.S. paleontologists have discovered fossils of two new species of dinosaurs, the relatives of the famous Triceratops.
The new Kosmoceratops has five times as many horns on his head as his cousin, as is the richly decorated dinosaur known to man. It is the largest and body, Utahceratops five horns were giant herbivore that lived in "Laramidia" - a continent is formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating the eastern and western parts of the continent for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period.
The newly discovered dinosaur, Triceratops close relatives of the famous, were announced today in PLoS ONE, the online journal open access produced by the Public Library of Science.
Utah scientists that most of the horns are used to attract mates and intimidate rivals of the same species. Dinosaur fossils were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah - a hotbed for dinosaur discoveries in the last decade - and skulls of the species are on display at the Museum of Natural History Utah.
The larger of the two new dinosaur with a skull of 2.3 meters (about 7 feet) long, is Utahceratops gettyi (U-tah-SARA-tops get-EE-i). The first part of the name combines the state of origin ceratopsids, Greek for "horned face." The second part of the name honors Mike Getty, collections manager of paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah and the discoverer of this animal.

Mark Loewen, one of the authors on the paper, compared Utahceratops "a giant rhinoceros with a ridiculously big head."
Kosmoceratops richardsoni (KOZ-mo-SARA-tops RICH-ard-son-i) is the name of Scott Richardson, the volunteer who found two skulls of this animal. Kosmoceratops also has horns eyes sideways-oriented, but much longer and said that Utahceratops.
In total, Kosmoceratops has a total of 15 horns - one on the nose, one above each eye, one at the end of each cheek bone, and ten in all the posterior margin of bone wheel - which is the most ornate known dinosaur head.
Scott Sampson, author of the study, said, "Kosmoceratops is one of the most amazing animals known, with an enormous skull decorated with a variety of bells and whistles of bone."
For most of the Cretaceous period, tens of millions of years ago, the exceptionally high sea levels flooded the lower parts of several continents around the world. In North America, a shallow warm sea and called the Western Interior sea stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, dividing the continent in land mass east and west, known as Appalachia and Laramidia.
Whereas little is known about the plants and animals that lived in Appalachia, Laramidia rocks exposed in the western interior of North America have generated a lot of dinosaur remains. Laramidia was less than a third the size of the current North America, the approximation of the area of Australia.
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