This Triassic reptile grew horns millions of years before the famous horned dinosaurs evolved.

Nature · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Long before ceratopsid dinosaurs roamed the earth, a large, herbivorous reptile named Shringasaurus was already sporting impressive brow horns. Discovered in India, this creature offers a rare glimpse into convergent evolution, mirroring the physical traits of later dinosaurs while living in a harsh, semi-arid landscape millions of years earlier.

Shringasaurus indicus, a member of the allokotosaur group, was identified from a single bone bed in the Denwa Formation of Madhya Pradesh, India. Named in 2017 by researchers including Sarandee Sengupta and Martín D. Ezcurra, this quadrupedal reptile lived during the Middle Triassic. Its name, derived from Sanskrit and Greek, translates to horned lizard, a nod to the two prominent, forward-curving horns protruding from its skull. These structures, likely covered in keratin, were attached to the frontal bones and grew more robust as the animal matured.

The discovery of eight individuals in a single, monodominant bone bed suggests that Shringasaurus was a gregarious animal that lived in mixed-age, and potentially mixed-sex, herds. The fossils were preserved in a crevasse splay deposit, likely the result of a mass mortality event caused by flooding. The presence of both horned and hornless specimens among the remains indicates the species was likely sexually dimorphic, with females potentially lacking horns entirely. This trait, coupled with the horns' growth patterns, suggests they functioned primarily through sexual selection rather than defense.

Physically, Shringasaurus shared striking similarities with later sauropodomorph dinosaurs, including a long neck, deep shoulders, and leaf-shaped, serrated teeth. These features suggest it occupied the ecological niche of a large, high-browsing herbivore. Despite these resemblances, it belongs to the family Azendohsauridae, closely related to Azendohsaurus. The environment it inhabited was a seasonal, semi-arid floodplain where the herd likely congregated near river channels during periods of drought, eventually being buried by the very floods that defined their landscape.

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