Ajkaceratops - a ceratopsian after all!

UPDATE: Ajka appeared on TV! https://x.com/Sketchy_raptor/status/2068770503322374487

Another piece of 3D palaeoart I made for the London Natural History Museum's research group! I've been sitting on this one for over a year, but the associated paper has just been published!

After years of disputed identity, new skull material confirms that the ornithischian dinosaur Ajkaceratops is indeed a european ceratopsian. But, there's an extra wrinkle. It turns out that many other european ornithischians previously identified as iguanodontians, including Zalmoxes, may also be ceratopsians. This is a pretty major shakeup of the conventional cerapodan family tree.

The full paper in Nature, by Maidment et al.: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09897-w

And the NHM's official press release over on their site: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2026/january/europes-missing-ceratopsian-dinosaurs-have-finally-been-found.html

The model was made in Blender, and I used PolyHaven (https://polyhaven.com/) assets to form the environment in the render that's being used in the press releases and paper. If you are a Blender artist, you should really consider supporting PolyHaven to get access to their integrated Blender addon, which allows easy browsing and importing of their 1000s of public domain, high quality assets and textures.