His boss was rancher and avid fossil collector Charles Arthur Guernsey, who just so happened to show it to Hatcher. When it broke off, the skull tumbling to the bottom of the cleft, Wilson brought the horn to his boss. He tried to recover it by throwing a lasso around one of the horns. Wilson had been startled by the sight of a monstrous skull poking out of the side of a ravine. The Triceratops holotype, YPM 1820, was collected in 1888 from the Lance Formation of Wyoming by fossil hunter John Bell Hatcher, but Marsh initially described this specimen as another species of Ceratops. Polyonax has the same issue as Agathaumas, with the fragmentary remains non-assignable beyond Ceratopsidae. The fossils only consisted of fragmentary horn cores, 3 dorsal vertebrae, and fragmentary limb elements. Polyonax mortuarius was collected by Cope himself in 1873 from northeastern Colorado, possibly coming from the Maastrichtian Denver Formation. Due to the fragmentary nature of the remains, it can only confidently be assigned to Ceratopsidae. Agathaumas was named based on a pelvis, several vertebrae, and a few ribs collected by Fielding Bradford Meek and Henry Martyn Bannister near the Green River of southeastern Wyoming from layers coming from the Maastrichtian Lance Formation. It took a third and much more complete skull to fully change his mind.Īlthough not confidentially assignable, fossils possibly belonging to Triceratops were described as two taxa, Agathaumas sylvestris and Polyonax mortuarius, in 18, respectively, by Marsh's archrival Edward Drinker Cope. He realized that there were horned dinosaurs by the next year, which saw his publication of the genus Ceratops from fragmentary remains, but he still believed B. alticornis to be a Pliocene mammal. This specimen was sent to Othneil Charles Marsh, who believed that the formation from which it came from dated from the Pliocene and that the bones belonged to a particularly large and unusual bison, which he named Bison alticornis. The first named fossil specimen now attributed to Triceratops is a pair of brow horns attached to a skull roof that were found by George Lyman Cannon near Denver, Colorado, in the spring of 1887.
See also: Timeline of ceratopsian research Illustration of specimen YPM 1871E, the horn cores that were erroneously attributed to Bison alticornis, the first named specimen of Triceratops As the archetypal ceratopsian, Triceratops is one of the most beloved, popular dinosaurs and has been featured in numerous films, postage stamps, and many other types of media. Specimens representing life stages from hatchling to adult have been found. Triceratops has been documented by numerous remains collected since the genus was first described in 1889 by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. This view has still been highly disputed and much more data is needed to settle this ongoing debate. Research published in 2010 concluded that the contemporaneous Torosaurus, a ceratopsid long regarded as a separate genus, represents Triceratops in its mature form. Seventeen different species, however, have been named throughout history. Two species, T. horridus and T. prorsus, are considered valid today. Triceratops was traditionally placed within the "short-frilled" ceratopsids, but modern cladistic studies show it to be a member of Chasmosaurinae, which usually have long frills. More recent interpretations find it probable that these features were primarily used in species identification, courtship, and dominance display, much like the antlers and horns of modern ungulates. Traditionally, these have been viewed as defensive weapons against predators.
The functions of the frills and three distinctive facial horns on its head have long inspired countless debates. It shared the landscape with and was most likely preyed upon by Tyrannosaurus, though it is less certain that two adults would battle in the fanciful manner often depicted in museum displays and popular media. It was also one of the largest, up to 8–9 metres (26–30 ft) long and 5–9 metric tons (5.5–9.9 short tons) in body mass. The name Triceratops, which literally means 'three-horned face', is derived from the Greek words trí- ( τρί-) meaning 'three', kéras ( κέρας) meaning 'horn', and ṓps ( ὤψ) meaning 'face'.īearing a large bony frill, three horns on the skull, and a large, four-legged body, exhibiting convergent evolution with bovines and rhinoceroses, Triceratops is one of the most recognizable of all dinosaurs and the most well-known ceratopsian. It was one of the last-known non-avian dinosaurs and lived until the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. 'three-horned face') is a genus of chasmosaurine ceratopsian dinosaur that lived during the late Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous period, about 68 to 66 million years ago in what is now western North America.
Triceratops ( / t r aɪ ˈ s ɛr ə t ɒ p s/ try- SERR-ə-tops lit.
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