George Phillips, the paleontology curator for the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, made the discovery earlier this month in the Owl Creek Formation near New Albany.

      The tooth belonged to a type of ceratopsian, or horned dinosaur, and is estimated to be 67 million years old, Phillips said. It is only one of three fossils of a ceratopsian dinosaur ever found in eastern North America.

      “The fossil record for dinosaurs east of the Mississippi River is very scant compared to western North America,” Phillips said. “This is because the vast majority of dinosaur-age sediments preserved east of the Mississippi River are marine in nature, whereas the part of our continent west of the Mississippi River has great thicknesses of terrestrial sediments that preserve great numbers of dinosaur fossils.”

      After posting pictures of the tooth on social media, Phillips was contacted by a specialist in the field of ceratopsian dinosaurs about writing a report for a scientific, peer-reviewed journal.

      The Triceratops is included in the ceratopsian dinosaur category.

--------This article was originally published by Micah Fleet