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Answer to mass dinosaur grave mystery

TORONTO, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Canadian dinosaur hunters say a mass grave in Dinosaur Provincial Park was probably created when a tsunami engulfed the animals 76 million years ago.

Another part of the mystery was who the victims of the tsunami were, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported Sunday.

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After painstaking comparisons, they concluded that they had found a new Canadian dinosaur, one with an elaborate array of horns and hooks on its head.

"It is spiked like a medieval mace," said Michael Ryan, now at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He named the beast Centrosaurus brinkmani, in honor of Canadian paleontologist Donald Brinkman at the Royal Tyrell Museum.

Ryan said each animal was as big as a two-ton truck, so a herd of 10,000 would have been enormous.

The spikes looked menacing, but were largely ornamental and may have been signs of sexual maturity, he told the newspaper.

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