Science news<\/p>\n
By James Ashworth<\/p>\n
First published 7 January 2026<\/p>\n
Fossils of ceratopsian dinosaurs, the group containing Triceratops and its relatives, are widespread across the northern hemisphere.<\/p>\n
However, they\u2019re curiously absent from Europe. New research reveals that these missing ceratopsians might have been under our noses the whole time, completely reshaping our understanding of European dinosaurs.<\/p>\n
Relatives of Triceratops<\/a> have never been found in Europe \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n Since the first dinosaur was named over 200 years ago, only four potential ceratopsians have been unearthed in the whole of Europe. However, the fragmentary nature of these fossils meant that their true identity has been contentious.<\/p>\n Instead, scientists thought that Europe was dominated by a group of little-known dinosaurs called the rhabdodontids. These animals, which are relatives of Iguanodon<\/a>, are found nowhere else on Earth.<\/p>\n New research, published in the journal Nature, now explains why. After studying an 84-million-year-old dinosaur called Ajkaceratops, palaeontologists have realised that many rhabdodontids might actually be misidentified ceratopsians.<\/p>\n These dinosaurs would have lived in Europe when the continent was a series of islands dotted around the Tethys Sea, which could help to explain their unique diversity. Professor Susannah Maidment, our dinosaur expert who led the paper, says that the finding rewrites what palaeontologists know about Cretaceous<\/a> Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cThis paper shows that, rather than being completely absent, ceratopsians were actually quite common in Europe,\u201d Susannah adds. \u201cIt means that the European dinosaur faunas probably weren\u2019t that different from other parts of the northern hemisphere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn this case, the idea that Europe\u2019s islands drove the evolution of many unique species might not be as strong as was once thought. That makes it even more important to re-examine Europe\u2019s dinosaur fossils to find out what was happening here in the Late Cretaceous.\u201d<\/p>\n How did ceratopsians evolve and spread around the world?<\/p>\n By confirming the existence of ceratopsians in Europe, the study fills in a long-standing gap in the journey these dinosaurs took across the northern hemisphere.<\/p>\n The earliest ceratopsians, such as Yinlong<\/a>, evolved in Asia before dispersing multiple times into North America. Here, they evolved into large, frilled species such as Triceratops and Torosaurus<\/a>. The easiest route for these dinosaurs to have taken would have been through Europe, but the historic lack of fossils from this region challenged that narrative.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that dinosaurs were able to cross the Atlantic, which was just starting to open during the Cretaceous,\u201d Susannah explains. \u201cDinosaurs such as Allosaurus<\/a> have been found in Portugal and the USA<\/a>, showing that they had at least some ability to move between continents.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLots of animals can swim and, as the islands of the central European basin weren\u2019t that far apart, it would make sense if dinosaurs were able to island hop. It would be much stranger if they couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n The discovery of new Ajkaceratops skull fossils has finally provided the evidence that shows ceratopsians did make it to Europe after all. The palaeontologists found that not only was this Hungarian dinosaur definitely a ceratopsian, but that a closely related rhabdodontid called Mochlodon<\/a> was actually the same species.<\/p>\n As they pulled further on this thread, they found that the science behind all rhabdodontids began to unravel.<\/p>\n Reinventing the rhabdodontids<\/p>\n After realising that rhabdodontids such as Mocholodon might just be ceratopsians who adapted to life on European islands, the team started looking at other rhabdodontid dinosaurs from the continent.<\/p>\n Their analyses showed that the Romanian dinosaur Zalmoxes shqiperorum, often depicted as a miniature Iguanodon-like animal, was also a ceratopsian. Its pelvis, for example, lacks a protuberance that iguanodontians have.<\/p>\n The researchers moved the species to the new ceratopsian genus Ferenceratops, named in honour of Baron Franz Nopcsa, a famous Austro-Hungarian palaeontologist of the twentieth century who originally found its remains.<\/p>\n The team\u2019s findings were less certain about another Zalmoxes<\/a> species, Z. robustus, whose name remains unchanged. This is because it appeared as both a ceratopsian and an iguanodontian depending on how the data was analysed.<\/p>\n Susannah says that this highlights the difficulty in studying two groups of closely related dinosaurs, especially when their European remains are often not well preserved.<\/p>\n