About 78 million years ago, a peculiar-looking dinosaur roamed the swamps and wetlands of what is now Montana. The huge plant eater boasted a splendid frill on its head, topped with spikes and two large horns which curved downward like blades. Two more horns jutted out from above its eyes. The dinosaur, described for the first time today in PeerJ, is so distinctive that researchers have declared it a new species and given it a name: Lokiceratops rangiformis, after the blade-wielding Norse god Loki.

But some scientists say the dinosaur could simply be a particularly ornate example of a previously described species. “It’s an interesting-looking animal,” says Jordan Mallon, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature who was not involved in the study. “I think it’s going to be a little contentious as to whether it represents a new species or not.”

The dinosaur’s skull and parts of its skeleton were discovered in 2019 in a Montana quarry, 3.6 kilometers south of the Canadian border, by commercial fossil hunter Mark Eatman. The Evolution Museum in Maribo, Denmark, bought the fossil pieces in 2021 and commissioned an international team of researchers to collaborate with the company Fossilogic to prepare, mount, and study the specimen in Utah.