A scientist has identified fossilised bones in a Canadian museum as belonging to a new species of dinosaur, saying researchers had only "scratched the surface" in terms of dinosaur diversity.

Nick Longrich, a paleontologist who teaches at the University of Bath in Britain, says the bones appear to be from a previously unknown Pentaceratops, a buffalo-sized plant-eating horned dinosaur.

He says the distinctive frill - the crest at the back of the animal's head - helped identify it.
Previous specimens have been found in the southwestern United States, but the 75-million-year-old fossils, brought to the museum 75 years ago, were found in the Canadian province of Alberta.

In a paper in the academic journal Cretaceous Research, Longrich christened the new species Aquilonius, a Latin word meaning northern.

"In 25 years we'll find twice as many dinosaurs. We're finding them faster than we ever were before," Longrich, a senior lecturer in the university's biology department, told AFP.

"It seems dinosaurs were more regional in their distribution than animals are today.

"If you look in different localities you get different dinosaur species," he said.

Longrich says he made his identification based on the skull and the frill, which was believed to be a courtship device like a peacock's display.

"Every species ends up with a unique one," he said.

Around 700 species of dinosaurs have been identified so far, but Longrich says a re-evaluation of fossils in collections around the world means that this number will rise even without new excavations.