New dinosaur discoveries are always big news, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Based on fossils recovered in Montana and Canada, scientists have dubbed the new find Mercuriceratops gemini. “ceratops” means “horned face” (not unlike the more familiar triceratops), and “mercury” refers to the wings on the helmet of the eponymous Roman god, a nod to the wing-like protrusion on the back of the dinosaur’s head.

“The butterfly-shaped frill, or neck shield, of Mercuriceratops is unlike anything we have seen before,” said co-author Dr. David Evans, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum. “Mercuriceratops shows that evolution gave rise to much greater variation in horned dinosaur headgear than we had previously suspected.”

Mercuriceratops is believed to have been around 20 feet long and would have weighed about two tons. It lived about 77 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period. Sporting a parrot-like beak and horn protrusions above its eyes, it would have been an herbivorous dinosaur.

Though the Montana specimen was the first to be collected, the Alberta, Canada specimen confirmed to paleontologists that their findings weren’t of physically deformed animals or other anomalies. As with most things in nature, they suspect that the dinosaur’s odd headgear probably served an evolutionary purpose.

“Horned dinosaurs in North America used their elaborate skull ornamentation to identify each other and to attract mates—not just for protection from predators.  The wing-like protrusions on the sides of its frill may have offered male Mercuriceratops a competitive advantage in attracting mates,” said lead author Dr. Michael Ryan, curator of vertebrate paleontology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

What’s perhaps most surprising about the discovery is that it was made not in a remote location, but in otherwise familiar fossil territory. It shows just how little we know when it comes to what creatures roamed the Earth millions of years ago.

“This discovery of a previously unknown species in relatively well-studied rocks underscores that we still have many more new species of dinosaurs to left to find,” said co-author Dr. Mark Loewen, research associate at the Natural History Museum of Utah.

Photo credit: Danielle Dufault