There's a starsaur waiting in the ground/ He'd like to come and meet us/ But he thinks he'd blow our minds.

There’s a starsaur waiting in the ground/ He’d like to come and meet us/ But he thinks he’d blow our minds.

The great 2020 saurischian streak has broken! Finally we get a new bird-hipped dinosaur, and it’s a ceratopsian. I’m including this new horned dinosaur, Stellasaurus, along with another recently discovered and also fragmentary new taxon from Mexico: Paraxenisaurus. Without further fuss and ado . . . .

Paleontology Newsflash Paraxenisaurus normalensis and Stellasaurus ancellae iimg

Paraxenisaurus

Stellasaurus

Serrano-Brañas, C. I., Espinosa-Chávez, B., Maccracken, S. A., Gutiérrez-Blando, C., de León-Dávila, C., & Ventura, J. F. (2020). Paraxenisaurus normalensis, a large deinocheirid ornithomimosaur from the Cerro del Pueblo Formation (Upper Cretaceous), Coahuila, Mexico. Journal of South American Earth Sciences, 102610.

Lee, Y. N., Barsbold, R., Currie, P. J., Kobayashi, Y., Lee, H. J., Godefroit, P., … & Chinzorig, T. (2014). Resolving the long-standing enigmas of a giant ornithomimosaur Deinocheirus mirificus. Nature, 515(7526), 257-260.

Wilson JP, Ryan MJ, Evans DC. 2020 A new, transitional centrosaurine ceratopsid from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana and the evolution of the ‘Styracosaurus-line’ dinosaurs. R. Soc. Open Sci. 7: 200284.

Holmes, R. B., Persons, W. S., Rupal, B. S., Qureshi, A. J., & Currie, P. J. (2020). Morphological variation and asymmetrical development in the skull of Styracosaurus albertensis. Cretaceous Research, 107, 104308.