2022 Canada Discovering Dinosaurs Mercury's Horned face 1 oz Silver Rhodium
 
Second coin of the famous serie called " DISCOVERING DINOSAURS" also Includ:
2022 - Mercury's Horned Face
2021 - Reaper of Death
 
Discover a dinosaur with bony “wings” on its head. Order your rhodium-plated coin today!
 
A followup to 2021’s Reaper of Death! Mercury’s Horned Face or Mercuriceratops gemini is the featured star of our second Discovering Dinosaurs coin, and the first things you’ll notice about this ceratopsid are the bony, wing-like protrusions on its head. Engraved on the coin’s reverse, its skull fossil is especially striking against the black rhodium-plated “rock” background, which pays tribute to the discovery that yielded another piece of Canada’s prehistoric past.
 
DESIGN
Designed by Canadian paleoartist Julius Csotonyi, the coin’s reverse features the fossilized skull of Mercuriceratops gemini, a recently discovered horned dinosaur species. Beneath the black rhodium plating, the engraved texture represents the rock formation in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park where a key fossil fragment was found. The obverse also features rhodium plating behind the effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II by Susanna Blunt.
 
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
 
The Artist:
"It's always a thrill to illustrate the newest additions to Canada's amazing diversity of ceratopsian (horned) dinosaurs, whose uniquely shaped neck shields functioned as visual signals. For Mercuriceratops, the challenge was to accurately portray the weird squamosal skull bone (resembling the mythical winged helmet of Mercury) while creatively rotating the skull so that the elongated head could fit within the circular rim of the coin!"
- Julius Csotonyi, Paleoartist
 
The Expert:
“Mercuriceratops is an example of a dinosaur species that’s known from a single bone only. Species of several groups of dinosaurs, like horned dinosaurs and duckbilled dinosaurs, are all very similar to each other and can often only be distinguished based on differences on one or a few bones. For example, duckbilled dinosaur species often only differ based on the shape of their crest. In horned dinosaurs, it’s often the shape of the bones forming the frill (shield behind the head) that allows paleontologists to recognize different species. In the case of Mercuriceratops, paleontologists found a bone of the frill that was unlike any that had ever been found for any other species. That’s how they knew they were dealing with a brand new species, even though they knew nothing else about the rest of the body.”
- Dr. François Therrien, Curator of Dinosaur Palaeoecology, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

DID YOU KNOW?
Its unusual frill may look scary, but it likely helped Mercuriceratops to attract a mate. Unveiled in 2014, this six-metre-long herbivore was described from near-identical skull fragments of two individuals—one recovered from Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta and the other from the Judith River Formation in Montana (United States)—hence the species name, gemini (“twin” in Latin).
The genus name, Mercuriceratops, means “Mercury’s horned face.” It was named after Mercury, the Roman messenger to the gods, who is often depicted with wings on his helmet.

PACKAGING
Your coin is individually encapsulated and presented in a Royal Canadian Mint-branded clamshell with a black beauty box.