By EMILY SCHABACKER/Montana State News
Seventy-five million years ago in northern Montana a lipless creature with scaly facial armor and cornified skin wreaked havoc on duckbilled hadrosaurs and other small carnivores. Newly discovered dinosaur D. horneri, unearthed in Choteau in the early 1990s, has finally been classified as a species closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex and was never before seen by paleontologists.
Twenty-five years since the dinosaur was excavated, the species has finally been named Daspletosaurus horneri or “Horner’s Frightful Lizard,” named after Jack Horner, the renowned former Montana State University paleontologist and Museum of the Rockies curator.
Paleontology professor David Varricchio of Montana State University suggested naming the dinosaur after Horner in honor of the mentorship he provided for paleontology students at MSU as well the contributions he has made to the field, according to Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Continue reading “New tyrannosaurus species named for Horner”