A Geologist Went Fishing in Alberta — He Found a Horned Skull Sticking Out of the Cliff

Ancient Canada reveals one of Alberta’s strangest dinosaur discoveries: a horned dinosaur skull found accidentally by a geologist who had gone fishing along the Oldman River. In 2005, Calgary geologist Peter Hews noticed a piece of bone sticking out of a cliff in southwestern Alberta. What looked like a small exposed fragment turned out to be the tip of a massive dinosaur skull still locked inside rock nearly as hard as concrete. It took two field seasons to remove the fossil and another 17 months of laboratory preparation before scientists could finally see the complete skull. The animal was about 68 million years old and belonged to the same broad family of horned dinosaurs as Triceratops. But its skull looked completely wrong for that group. Instead of the long brow horns and relatively simple frill expected from a Triceratops relative, this dinosaur had a large nose horn, small horns above its eyes and a short frill surrounded by enormous flat plates of bone that formed a crown around its head. Those features closely resembled another group of horned dinosaurs that appears to have disappeared before this animal lived. Scientists concluded that the similarities were an extraordinary example of convergent evolution — two different dinosaur lineages independently evolving remarkably similar head ornamentation. The new species was eventually named Regaliceratops peterhewsi, meaning roughly “royal horned face of Peter Hews.” The fossil also earned the nickname Hellboy because of its short brow horns and the brutal difficulty of removing it from the cliff. In this video, we explore how a fishing trip led to the discovery of a completely new dinosaur, why its skull surprised paleontologists, what its strange crown may have been used for, and how one fossil changed what scientists thought they knew about horned dinosaur evolution. #AncientCanada #CanadaHistory #Dinosaurs #PrehistoricCanada #Paleontology ⚠️ Some visuals are illustrative. Certain materials may be used under Fair Use for commentary and educational purposes.