Utah's newest dinosaur discovery, an 80 million-year-old horned ceratopsian dinosaur, was presented on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006, to the press at the Utah Core Research Center in Salt Lake City.

Discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the dinosaur has been unofficially dubbed the "Last Chance Ceratopsian."

"Last Chance" was discovered in April 2002 by Utah Geological Survey paleontologist Don DeBlieux, who was doing inventory work in the area.

"I was just cruising around, looking for a site and I walked to a nearby ledge," DeBlieux said. "I just set my backpack down and when I did, I noticed a few pieces of small orange bone."

Upon closer inspection, those small pieces of bone turned out to be part of a much larger find: the skull of a brand-new dinosaur.

"It was a bit of a 'eureka' moment when I realized it was the cross-section of a skull," DeBlieux said.

Over the next three years after the skull's discovery, eight days were spent using a gas-powered saw to cut through the rock ledge in order to remove the block containing the skull. The block containing the skull was whittled down to 1,000 pounds in order for it to be airlifted safely to the lab for further examination in September 2005.

The preserved skull is actually only one half of the skull, with the right side missing and the left side of the skull completely intact.

"To find a complete skull is fairly rare, but these types of skulls are symmetrical, so if you find a half, it is really like finding the whole," DeBlieux said.

There is speculation that the other half of the skull simply eroded away before becoming covered in silt where it could be buried and preserved, according to State Paleontologist Jim Kirkland.

"Last Chance" is a new genus of the long-horned centrosaurine ceratopsid dinosaur family, which includes the well-known Triceratops. It is the oldest and most primitive dinosaur of this family ever found.

The new dinosaur is unique from other horned dinosaurs in that it is the only known genus to have two nose horns, in addition to two brow horns. In total, the dinosaur has 28 pairs of horns.

"It may be a record, or close to it," Kirkland said. "It is my estimation that it is the spiniest dinosaur we have found. It's been almost 100 years since we have found a dinosaur this flashy."

Though some of the horns, particularly the brow horns, are used for fighting and self-protection, the majority are simply for showing off, Kirkland said.

Though the skull has been the only part of the dinosaur to be recovered, the size and structure of the body has been estimated based on related species. Its body size is roughly comparable to that of an African rhinoceros, according to Kirkland.

Brad Wolverton, whose job is to make a life-size reconstruction of the dinosaur, said that this particular dinosaur is nothing short of fantastical.

"It is absolutely outrageous looking," he said. "In this case, who needs a unicorn? This [dinosaur] makes a unicorn look as common as a poodle. Nature trumps fantasy every time."

DeBlieux and Kirkland officially unveiled the new dinosaur at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada last Friday.

Though an estimated several hundred hours are still needed to prepare the skull for display, DeBlieux and Kirkland hope to have it finished within a year, when it can then be officially named and displayed at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

Copyright Brigham Young University 26 Oct 2006