There’s been a small renaissance in coins featuring dinosaurs over the last few years and the Royal Canadian Mint have been a major proponent of that, first with the excellent five-coin antiqued-centred range, and then with the glow-in-the-dark bimetallic coins. Their most recent series called ‘Canadian Dinosaurs’ and struck in uncoloured fine silver, started with the Bathygnathus and followed up with the Scutellosaurus.

This month a third coin appears in this series along with the first in a whole new range called ‘Prehistoric Animals’. This time there are two versions; a one-ounce silver and a 1/10oz gold catering for more price points at $89.95 and $279.95 respectively.

In 2012, a team of Canadian palaeontologists rediscovered a series of fossils collected in 1958 from Alberta’s Foremost Formation, near the village of Foremost. These samples led researchers to identify not only a new species of dinosaur, but the oldest species of its kind yet discovered in Canada. Dr. Ryan and Dr. Evans also collected an additional fragmentary skull of the Xenoceratops from just north of Foremost that confirmed aspects of its reconstruction. Researchers believe this dinosaur was about the size of a rhinoceros and weighed nearly 2 tons!

The reverse image by Canadian artist Julius Csotonyi features an interpretation of how Xenoceratops may have looked. Viewed from the front on its right side, this full-body portrait presents some of Xenoceratops’ most striking features, including its beak-like mouth, vast spiky skull frill, horns, large muscular body, and relatively short legs. It walks on four-clawed feet across a smooth, stony land mass, its small right eye cast upon the viewer. This artist’s depiction presents an interpretation of possible tonal variations on a pebble-textured hide — all rendered in dimensional detail by Royal Canadian Mint engravers using multiple finishes and expert engraving techniques.

The scientific accuracy of the depiction was verified by palaeontologists Dr. Michael Ryan and Dr. David Evans who discovered and described Xenoceratops in 2012.